Chasing Mirages by Russandol

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Intrigues

War escalates in Kiinlúum. Mairon and Eönwë play their parts.

Thank you to wonderful SurgicalSteel, who provided expert medical advice for the relevant portions of this chapter.

 

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19. Intrigues

The war was taking a bad turn. Kiinlúum’s army was undoubtedly the stronger of the two, and yet it seemed to be cursed with misfortune. The weather was harsher than in any winter I recalled, which could not be avoided, but many other tribulations plagued the campaign.

The supplies of food and spare equipment seemed to be doomed to be lost or damaged in transit, crucial messages to and from the border often turned out to be badly ciphered or smudged, and therefore unreadable. Several times Chimal’s warriors had been forced to retreat with great losses after his spies had failed to provide accurate information about enemy strength. Worse still, the lords of Xaman seemed to anticipate our every move.

Clearly, a traitor walked in our midst.

When I voiced the obvious cause of our woes during the next war council, the chamber echoed with indignant protests at my casting of such a grave accusation, and with loud declarations of loyalty, though the captains of Chimal’s army remained silent in support of my words. The ahaw lifted his hand and killed all sound in the room.

‘Find him! Bring the traitor before me, and he will pay with every drop of his blood,’ he cried.

Secretly, Mairon set his agents on the task, having more faith in them than in the officials appointed by the king. Under his instruction, it was not late before one of the culprits was captured and taken to the ahaw. A zealous Ajyin had him questioned, and a confession followed. The man was spared from further agony with a swift blade through the heart, the merciful death Ajyin had promised and delivered in exchange for information.

His words incriminated Yaajóol, a captain of the army who had faithfully served Chimal’s father for over twenty years and had been opposed to the war.  Under torture sanctioned by the king, he did not accuse himself or others. Yet, on evidence of little weight that he kept denying, he was found guilty at his trial and sentenced to death, despite a rain of pleas for mercy from his fellow officers and from Mairon and myself, who insisted on a more thorough investigation.

Our petitions were ignored. Yaajóol’s execution was, without a doubt, the most cruel I have ever witnessed during all my ages in Arda. At dawn on the following day, he was taken to the square before the King’s House and stoned to death by the men of his own company, many of whom had tears in their eyes. I was sick when I returned home, and even Mairon seemed subdued.

A few days later, Mairon stood up in court. His commanding aura when he towered over the king and his council made them fall into a sudden, awed silence. His piercing gaze assessed his audience, and he nodded towards Chimal, in a token gesture seeking permission to address the council. However, he did not wait for acknowledgement. 

‘In Ahaw, my fellow Councillors, my esteemed lords and captains,’ he began. ‘A matter of the gravest nature has been brought to my attention.’

Chimal frowned, and a weak murmur rose within the group of courtiers.

‘Speak, Yúum Síihbalóob,’ said the king.

‘It is someone else whom I bid you all listen to, in Yúum.’

Mairon clapped his hands. Soldiers appeared at every entrance to the large audience hall. Through a side door, a small group entered and came to stand before the throne. Six soldiers and an officer all but dragged a filthy, unkempt prisoner with them, and let him drop to his knees a few steps from Chimal, where he remained with his head pressed to the floor, racked with sobs and whimpers.

‘What does this mean?’ cried Ajyin, jumping to his feet. ‘Suku’n[1], you should not...’

‘Silence!’ Mairon had not even raised his voice, but its sheer edge of dominance whipped Chimal’s brother by marriage into silence. I could not help smiling to myself.

The officer in charge of the prisoner, whom I had recognised as Yaajóol’s eldest son Jolkan, bowed and requested permission to speak, not from Chimal but from Mairon. Scanning the faces of all the soldiers, I realised that they had all belonged to Yaajóol’s company, now given to the command of Ajyin himself.

‘Yúum Síihbalóob, he confessed all and every detail after you... persuaded him out of his obstinacy,’ spoke Jolkan.

‘Who is this man you have brought?’ cried the ahaw.

‘He was apprehended by my servants, Your Highness. In highly suspicious circumstances,’ replied Mairon, pausing dramatically. ‘He was about to set fire to the consignment bound for our northern troops.’

‘Brother, that is not possible...’ cried Ajyin. Chimal raised his hand, demanding silence.

‘I am afraid it is,’ retorted Mairon smoothly. ‘I am skilled in reading the truth in Men, in Ahaw, even more so in those who seek to hide it. I suspected that the secrets that the prisoner held  might be useful to thwart those who conspire with our enemies, and therefore applied myself to the job of loosening his tongue. It did not take long to make him see reason.’

I shuddered at his words. Now I knew why the previous night he had locked himself in his workshop, or more likely, in the room underneath.

‘But we have already executed the traitor,’ objected Ajyin. His protest sounded strident in its nervous earnest, in contrast to Mairon’s melodious voice.

‘The alleged traitor,’ retorted Mairon. ‘I repeatedly expressed my doubts about his guilt, as did others who stand now in this room. We all wish to uncover the whole truth of the conspiracy, do we not?’

Ajyin gave a step backwards, but two of the captains came to stand next to him.

‘What is this?’ thundered Chimal.

‘Let us hear the testimony of the prisoner and we shall know,’ commanded Mairon.

Amongst moans and wringing of hands, the man spoke his confession.

His name was Sáabin. He had been recruited by a richly dressed man whose face he never saw, and he had been appointed the task of retrieving the messages that were dispatched to a number of agreed secret locations, deciphering them and carrying out the orders they contained, all in exchange for a most generous fee. Additionally, he must pass return messages to other people, unknown to him, who were to carry them over the northern border.

The man burst out crying, and begged for clemency, wrapping his arms around Mairon’s ankles and pressing his head to his feet.

‘How does the cipher work, Sáabin?’ asked Mairon, in a soothing tone. Without apparent effort he grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair and lifted him up, so that we could all see his face.

‘With this,’ replied the man. He thrust a hand inside his dirty clothes and brought out what looked like a carved wooden disk. On closer examination, it turned out to be several concentric circles which could spin and whose edges were carved with letters.

Ajyin began to recoil, but the two warriors at his side grasped him firmly by the arms, despite his protests and struggles. Mairon walked to face him, with steps graceful and silent, as those of a jaguar about to leap upon his prey. He reached out and wrapped his fingers over the gold chain around Ajyin’s neck, from which something hung, tucked under his clothes. The links snapped at a flick of Mairon’s wrist, and he lifted his hand to show the set of etched brass disks, smaller than their wooden equivalent, that swung from the chain.

‘Would it not be amazing if the offsets in both sets of rings were identical?’ commented Mairon, setting the chain, without touching the brass device suspended from it, on the small table next to Chimal. The king grasped both sets. His gaze darted from one to the other several times.

‘They are indeed the same,’ he said.

The prisoner was still kneeling, muttering gibberish. Mairon crouched at his side, murmured reassuring words and the man sighed loudly and nodded calmly. Mairon gently placed his hand on Sáabin’s head, and stroked his matted hair.

‘You may sleep now,’ he said. The man crumpled to the floor, dead.

A shocked silence crushed the council when Mairon stood to his full height and appraised the effect of his display of power, a clear warning to all. I shivered, despite the certainty of knowing that he had granted the man deliverance from a horrific death.

At length, Chimal snarled a command.

‘My wife. Bring her at once.’

As soon as Lotiya saw Ajyin in the hands of the soldiers, she threw herself at her husband’s feet. For the first time, her charms and tears availed her nothing.

Even if the subsequent interrogation proved that she had not been an active accomplice of her brother, she had hidden the knowledge of his treason. For that crime she was not slain, but publicly stripped and her luscious hair was shorn to the scalp before being flogged.

A wrathful Chimal condemned Ajyin to suffer the penalty dealt to spies in the realm of Xaman. Therefore, he was drawn, and hung from the gallows in front of his sister, before her eyes were plucked out. She staggered away from the city, led on foot by the soldiers, under the curses of the crowd assembled to watch their punishment. I was nauseated.

Mairon and I walked home in silence.

‘Why did they risk so much when they already had everything?’ I wondered.

‘Maybe Ajyin saw himself on the throne, the next god-king. Also, he confessed that their masters in the north had threatened to reveal the truth to Kiinlúum otherwise.’

‘We should have acted earlier, Mairon,’ I whispered at last. ‘As soon as we suspected him.’

‘Chimal would not have believed us against Lotiya’s word,’ he replied with asperity. ‘War is ugly, friend.’

‘Death would have been kinder to her,’ I murmured.

‘Indeed. A blind viper can still bite,’ said Mairon coldly.

On the following day, Chimal sent us a note to request our presence at a private audience.

‘Our reckless ahaw may have seen wisdom at last, friend,’ smirked Mairon, handing me the king’s polite, even humbled missive. ‘Let us end this war.’

 

~o~

 

 

Kiinlúum, Year 439 of the Second Age of Arda

After revealing Ajyin’s treachery, we were confident about our success in restoring peace swiftly, given the mismatch of might between Kiinlúum and her enemies, even after the damage caused by the traitors. Chimal sent a lavish embassy headed by a herald with full powers to negotiate the surrender. The terms were rather generous, as Mairon and I had advised, despite the fact that Xaman had been the initiator of the hostilities. A truce was soon established.

Inevitable bargaining of trivial details followed, if only to allow the enemy not to be wholly humiliated, by accepting several minor concessions. Unfortunately, without a common enemy to unite them, feuds broke out again between Xaman’s fief lords that prevented reaching the final agreement, so that months passed and skirmishes still breached the precarious peace.

In the meantime, my sense of unease remained, and Mairon fretted, too. A new turn of events soon provided proof that our troubles were by no means over.

Rumours began to reach us of a blind woman, a raving soothsayer that walked into the villages of the North to accuse the unholy realm of Kiinlúum of worshipping two demons, sent by the false gods to whisper lies into the ears of Men, and so corrupt them against the true believers of Darkness. Peace would only bring enslavement, she claimed, amongst other dire prophecies of doom.

‘Ironic, is it not, that the cult of Darkness, one of the ploys Melkor used to recruit his allies now comes back to plague us,’ I commented. Mairon frowned and, for a brief instant, I believed he would have no argument to counter my point.

‘It would be, Eönwë, if not for the fact that this harpy claims to have visions during which the true Lord of Darkness speaks directly to her mind,’ he replied dryly.

A cold tendril of fear awoke in my gut and coiled itself around my chest and throat, squeezing the air out of my lungs.

‘Have your spies confirmed her identity at last?’ I stammered at last. ‘Is she...’

‘Yes, friend.’ He began to pace agitatedly, like a caged beast. ‘They have watched the crowds gathered to hear Lotiya rant about the cruelty of our ahaw. She spouts threats of bitter calamity unless the heathen realm of Kiinlúum is razed to the ground to put an end to their foul worship and we, abominations who seek to destroy those faithful to the true Lord, are slain.’

‘Worse still,’ he concluded, ‘she has persuaded her masters and several other ruling lords about the truth of her visions as a divine message, and war is all but declared again.’

A few days later, yielding to the ahaw’s request and despite my deep misgivings, shared with Mairon, I agreed to travel to the Northern border and act as Chimal’s envoy. There was a dim hope that if I was seen to be no terrible demon and could instead expose the truth of Ajyin’s treason, further hostilities might still be avoided.

At our parting, Mairon buried his face in my hair and kissed me on the cheek. With a smile, he lifted my left hand and locked one of the mistarillë shackles around my wrist.

‘So that you remember me,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘It answers to your will, if it becomes an encumbrance.’

‘Never,’ I replied. ‘I will wait for you to remove it. Or not, as you wish...’

Despite an entire night of unhurried and most thorough farewell, I was almost undone by the heat of his lips on my skin, as if he meant to sear me with his mark. I stood enthralled by his starry gaze, unwilling to depart, until I forced myself to look away.

We walked together to the wide plain outside the city gates, where the three companies of riders under my command awaited in orderly rows. I greeted their captains and scanned the ranks who saluted me loudly, swords raised skywards. I nodded in approval.

The groom handed me the reins of my horse and Mairon held my stirrup. I mounted and leant down to steal a last kiss from him before giving the order to depart.

After a few hundred paces, I wheeled my mount round and lifted my hand. Mairon returned my gesture, his hair and his cloak billowing in the warm wind. I sped up to take the lead of the warriors of my host. Suddenly, a pang of what felt like fear knotted my chest and blurred my sight, and I nearly turned my horse and cantered back to the gates. Berating myself for the irrational impulse, I forced myself to carry on without looking behind.

 

News of the unrest along the border had seemingly been exaggerated by Chimal’s embassy in their anxious reports. The treaty was agreed within a week of my arrival at the border, prisoners exchanged and reparations paid or guarantees provided.

During my absence, missives were carried by fast riders between the city and the frontier. At dusk on the day before I started my return journey, a hastily penned note from Mairon was delivered, it read: “Twice I have sensed watchers. Be wary and keep well, friend.”

My heart thumped wildly and I was compelled to look behind me inside the tent that had become my temporary home. I listened intently, in the hope that I would sense a disturbance of some kind, if it was there, but nothing stood out from the ordinary din of the camp routine: the whinnying of horses, men talking and laughing, the gentle flapping of banners and loose tent canvas, the ringing rhythm of a ferrier’s hammer.

That night, however, my dreams returned. I longed for Mairon’s warmth and his soothing touch. Eventually, exhausted, I fell asleep with my right hand wrapped over the band of mistarillë he had given me.

At dawn, the camp was swiftly dismantled and we made ready to depart. All the official farewells had been exchanged over the border, and we could just make haste towards the city, a five day journey away if we pressed our horses.

After a long day of riding, I dreamt again. Many images flashed across my mind, most of them familiar from previous nightmares. The vision of Mairon looming over me in a circle of jeering Orcor jolted me back to reality, sweating and panting in the gray light preceding dawn, to a cry of alarm from the sentries.

Despite my curses, my aide all but forbade me to step out of my tent without my armour. Hastily, he helped me buckle it on, and handed me my sword and shield. When I lifted the entrance flap, I was hit by the acrid smell of tarred cloth burning; loud cries of rage and pain, clashing of swords and the thunder of many hooves told me that the attack was well under way.

One of my captains was already running towards me. Breathless from exertion, he gave me a short report of our position. The sentries had raised the alarm just before the perimeter was breached at three separate points by large hordes of mounted warriors. Our men were already gathering, ready to fight, and I quickly began to issue orders to deploy them to several points around the camp. Soon I began to believe we had contained the enemy.

However, the group of Kiinlúum’s soldiers defending the closest flank to my tent, most of them on foot, were fast retreating against the fury of the advancing attackers, who wore the red and blue of one of the lords of Xaman. Unsheathing my sword, I joined the fray with a lust for blood and a ferocity that I had never felt during the War in Beleriand. Fear seemed to enhance my senses; my instinct, honed by centuries of training, made me anticipate my foes’ every move, so that soon I was riding the horse of one of my dead enemies, and battled on at the head of Kiinlúum’s courageous warriors. 

Suddenly, two score of my men, mounted and fully armoured, came to our aid. We all cried in triumph at the sight of such welcome reinforcements, and strength returned, doubled, to our sword arms. The enemy began to retreat with heavy losses, and we gave chase, but I stopped when I realised that my borrowed horse was limping badly. I dismounted and patted his neck, whispering calming words while inspecting the wound. The poor beast had a deep gash high across its fore leg, all the way to the bone, which was cracked.  I dropped my shield and unsheathed my dagger, ready to end his misery.

At that time, I heard the fast beat of hooves and the weak groan of a bow as it neared full draw, and I turned my head to my left in time to see the edge of the evil-looking bodkin gleam in the growing sunlight. Almost at a gallop, the archer took careful aim from the safety of his saddle, out of the reach of my sword and yet less than twenty paces away, too short a distance for him to miss if he had any skill with his weapon.

Time seemed to stretch during the brief instant before he released the string, when his body was already twisting backwards. Mesmerised, I watched the flight of the arrow that sped towards me, too fast to dodge.

The impact made me stagger, as if I had been punched. The bowman’s cry of triumph as he galloped on startled me more than the sight of the red-fletched shaft sticking almost sideways from my armpit, just clear of the ornate steel and gold chestguard that Mairon had forged for me. A warm trickle of blood began to seep from the wound down my side.

A few heartbeats later, a sharp pain blossomed in my chest while the air seemed to become thin, empty of goodness. I inhaled deeply, vainly, and noticed the sudden torpor in my fingers. A quick glance at the hand wrapped around the hilt espied the tell-tale paleness under my nails. I was bleeding inside; the end of my hröa was very near.

‘Onwards, my lions, slay the demon! Bring me his head!’ shouted the leader of a small group of  enemy riders, all archers, that somehow seemed to have slipped through our forces. My assassin was amongst them.

My men slew them all before they could reach me. A hoarse cry of victory for Kiinlúum rent the air, followed by many other voices into a triumphant clamour.

My sword fell with a clang from my benumbed hand. I fell on my knees, and watched the ground rush strangely towards me. Familiar voices called, urgent but dim, as though spoken from a great distance. Strong arms lifted me to a sitting position. I sucked air in shallow, useless gulps; my heart raced, while fading too.

I did not wish to die. No, I could not die, I was deathless. Or was I? I would not leave him. I sobbed, desperately, choking. I could not breathe.

The links to my hröa thinned and stretched, still straining to cage me within. My senses wavered, becoming dull first, then sharp with the sensitivity given to my kindred. At once, despite the dazzling deluge, I was alerted to the presences surrounding me, lurking just beyond the Atani, who cried and wept nearby.

‘Meldonya…[2]’ My mind screamed what my throat could not.

‘Eönwë!’ I heard his frantic response, a roar within that thrummed in time with the last beat of blood in my veins.

‘They are here,’ I cried, voicelessly.

Darkness and death from one side, light and freedom from the other, they all claimed me at once and pulled me apart.

 

 

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[1] suku’n (Yucatec) older brother

[2] meldonya (Quenya) my lover; meldo is translated as “friend, lover” and I opt for the more intimate meaning.