~ The Thread Spinner ~ by Spiced Wine

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Chapter 4 ~ Desert Jewel ~

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~ Desert Jewel ~

The journey etched itself in Mélamírë’s mind as a tapestry of blowing dust, of slamming heat, of a land blasted white by the sun.
There were thirty soldiers, and wagons coming behind, so the pace was necessarily slow. It was irksome, but she became glad of the wagons that held, among other things, water casks. There were, Vanimórë told her, caravansaries, large and small, at every oasis on this route, but some of them could not be reached within a day’s slow journey. And one did not take risks with the desert.

There were no dunes in the Mirror of Fire. Here, the land seemed stripped and desiccated by Ages of sun; dust blew across it like lost wraiths searching for the peace of death. There were sudden ravaged hills, towers of rock sculpted by the incessant wind, unexpected canyons where one might find a lonely watering-hole, the water too bitter for humans to drink.

Like the men, Mélamírë wrapped herself in a loose robe, a turban wound about her head. The soldiers wore half-armour of mail and leather; Mélamírë adopted loose trews and boots, a soft shirt. Vanimórë used no cloak, merely covering his head with a long scarf; a cloak would not have allowed him to wear the twin swords at his back. They were mirrored in the banner that snapped out: two palm trees whose stems became scimitars that met at the base.

Vanimórë rode at the head, the banner bearer behind and Mélamírë after, between the young Tanout and L’tul whom, it seemed, had been appointed to see to her comfort when they camped at night.

When they stopped, that first night, Mélamírë felt battered by the desert. The heat was not so great a problem; she could regulate her body temperature, but she could not stay that dry, whipping wind. She watched Vanimórë dismount and land with a spring; he must be accustomed to it, she thought, and so would she become. The great stallion pushed his nose into Vanimórë’s chest, provoking am affectionate smile, a slap of the arching neck. Water kegs were broached and the horses drank. The sun was already setting with the swiftness of the desert.

Tanout poured Mélamírë a copper basin of water. She drank deeply, splashed her face and hands. There was little at this spot but a dead, twisted tree, an old tangle of shrub showing there had once been water.
‘The Prince says the desert was smaller once,’ Tanout said. ‘That it is growing year by year.’

Fires sprang up, tiny red-gold suns in the vastness, the men going about their duties with with disciplined purpose, heating water, tossing salted meat into pots. Mélamírë lay back, watched as the immense stars of the desert filled the sky. They seemed like an inverted bowl covering the world; never had she seen them so unimpeded by mountains or trees. She could hear the roar of those innumerable suns, remembered her father naming them, telling her that all but the closer planets were suns like their own, some larger, some smaller, contemplating the worlds that might circle them...she felt, laying there, as if she could float away into their ineffable light, join the stupendous power of their music.

‘Lady? Istyanis?’

Tanout’s voice jolted her out of reverie and she sat up, disoriented, rubbing her face. He offered her a bowl that smelled savoury, flat bread, a small cup that breathed the heady fumes of brandy. It was, she realised, surprisingly cold now the sun had gone down.
‘Thank you,’ she smiled.

She drank the stew, the meat softened and flavoured with herbs, thickened with chunks of squash. Small round tents had mushroomed around the fires in orderly circles. The horses munched at nose-bags, and men ate and talked quietly as if abashed by the silence of the desert. But even here, not altogether silent; Mélamírë heard the clawed skitter of some tiny, carapaced insect, but there were no birds, no animals but the horses; the night lay over them like an element of song.

There was a rustle, sudden warmth as a cloak was draped around her shoulders. She had not heard him approach; he walked like a cat.

‘It is not worth it, for this sky?’ He sank down, crossed long legs.

The food lay warm, ballast in her stomach. She took a small sip of the brandy, feeling, for the moment at least, oddly content.
‘It might be,’ she acknowledged.

‘I remember when I first saw the stars, the first sunrise...’

It came out of nowhere, the emotion, like a black wave, children’s voices, a boy’s, a girl’s, like the cries of lost gulls on a far-off lonely shore.
Vanya, Vanya! Look!’

What are they?

I do not know. They are so beautiful...

She slid a hand across her mouth. He said, quizzically, ‘What is it?’

‘You...you spoke of one like me, but long dead. Your words. You had a sister.’

Something in his face closed.
‘I never showed thee that.’

‘But you did,’ she insisted, stubbornly, ‘have a sister.’

‘Yes,’ he said flatly. ‘I had a sister.’

Mélamírë stared at him. His eyes, in the fireshot dimness gleamed indigo.
‘How did she die?’

For a long time, he did not reply, seeming to study her. Then, slowly, he exhaled.
‘I was not strong enough to save her,’ he said, and through the adamantine barrier she felt unending grief, aching tenderness like the last kiss before death. And at the bottom, guilt, like a ball of molten lead. ‘I was only strong enough to kill her.’

OooOooO

The wavering black line in the distance resolved itself into a long train of camels. Mélamírë had never seen them before save in illustrations, but her father had described them in the letters he sent during his absence. There was something strangely elegant about the ponderous, slow-stepping beasts, indefatigably traversing the inhospitable land.

‘This is the main route from Saikan and the eastern cities, Lady Istyanis,’ L’tul said. ‘We have cut across the desert to join it.’

‘We should reach the Oasis of Chadi tonight,’ Tanout added.

After the loneliness and silence of the desert, the trade road seemed busy. The camel train Mélamírë had seen was only one of several caravan heading west or east. The soldiers drew together to pass them, the banner snapping in the hot wind.

Vanimórë was clearly recognised. Merchants bowed their heads, some made signs with their hands when he had passed. Others said a name.

‘Dark Prince?’ She asked Tanout. ‘Why do they call him that?’

‘Because he serves the Zigûr, the Great Lord,’ the young man replied. ‘Or did, once. He told me he would again, when the Zigûr returns.’

‘Do you worship the Zigûr, Tanout?’ she asked.

‘No, Istyanis.’ He gave her a limpid, honey-coloured look. ‘My Lord does not approve of religion.’

She had to laugh. ‘But the temple? He does not prohibit religious practice.’

‘No, there are many temples in Sud Sicanna, Istyanis. It is human sacrifice he will not permit.’

And that was probably the only ‘religious’ practice he was familiar with, she guessed.

Mélamírë had not spoken to Vanimórë for three days. Although she had not asked for the brief image that had fallen on her out of the night, she yet felt as if she had prayed into something deeply private, something that still haunted him and hurt him.
In many ways, he reminded her of her father as Aulendil; there was the facade, and then what lay under it. It was said there were enormous mountains of ice in the far northern seas, where only a fraction showed above the surface of the water. It was an apt analogy.

She was relieved to see the promised oasis, a welcoming green in the barren land. The sight of the clattering palms, the smell of fresh water, was benison. There was a splendour to the desert, a glory in the star-crowded night skies, but its loneliness allowed her too much time to think when there was only the moan of the unceasing wind, the creak of wagons, the thump of hooves and the endless, shimmering horizon.

L’tul and Tanout joined her in the evenings, probably they were ordered to, but she took it kindly. They treated her with great deference, as if she was some royal emissary, and perhaps they did believe her just that. But they were wary as Tonda-kai’s wives had been, perhaps even more so. It amused her and irritated her in equal measure; the Men she had known were far more accustomed to Elves and yet, she had to admit, there was always an underlying uneasiness. Her father had called it jealousy, mortal for immortal, and said there was no cure for it.

But they were unfailingly courteous. They diced with her, told her of Sud Sicanna, and she learned that Tanout had been a street boy, an orphan, whom Vanimórë had taken in and trained to become a warrior. It was, she gathered, the dream of all young men, to earn a place in the Prince’s personal guard, and training began young.

Caravansaries were far more than large taverns; they supported the trade routes, the flow of commerce and news. Chadi was huge, solid against the desert winds, three stories high. Galleries overlooked workshops, animal pens, stalls, two fountains that spilled the life-giving water into great troughs. Mélamírë heard the tap of hammers in smithies, the bellow of animals, voices raised in energetic babble. The air was pungent with manure, spices, hot food and human sweat.

Servants rushed forward as they rode in. A man in a red robe hastened toward them, folded himself almost in half as he greeted Vanimórë.

Mélamírë dismounted, hoping a bath would present itself in the near future. Vanimórë, as if he heard her thoughts, came across, tossing back his veil. There was nothing in his face to show that anything was amiss between them. It occurred to her then, blindingly, that he was not angry at her, but at himself, hence his silence of the last days.
‘Thou canst bathe here,’ he said, reading her mind or perhaps her wistful expression. ‘A servant will show thee after thou hast seen thy rooms.’

Their rooms were on the topmost tier reserved, she guessed, for nobility. Low divans were scattered with cushions, rich rugs covered the stone floors. Fretted metal and glass lamps stood in recess and on low, polished tables. A plump, black-skinned girl glided about setting a taper to them and lit sticks of incense whose smoke twirled idly, rich and sweet. Ornate wooden screens half partitioned the three rooms, and the shutters were drawn against the wind.

Mélamírë drank deep from a jug of cool water, and unwound her veil. Dust clung to the folds, and her scalp prickled with salt from her sweat. She shook the fine cloth out. ‘There are baths?’

The woman stared, went to her knees. ‘Yes, my Lady.’

A little irritated by the obeisance, by the unmistakable fear in the black eyes, Mélamírë gestured for her to rise.
‘Then please, take me to them.’

They did not have to go out into the courtyard again; stairs lead down to the bottom floor. Perhaps these baths too, were for passing nobles. Mélamírë smelled the water, its coolness, the tang of deep minerals, saw the billow of its reflection on pillar and roof. In the ante-room, she stripped and the servant (or more probably a slave) took her clothes, bundling them protectively against her chest, dipping into another bow.

The large bath was empty, save for Vanimórë. He did not see her; his back to her, he was rinsing soap from his hair, a young male slave in a breechclout pouring clean water from a jug. The boy did see Mélamírë and his reaction caused Vanimórë to turn. He looked startled. A flick of his fingers sent the goggling slave from the room.
‘Thou wert supposed to be taken to the women’s baths,’ he said.

His voice carried back from the curving roof, brought the slave-girl cringing and bowing.
‘My Lord, they are full, a slave caravan from Sud Cull bound East —‘

‘I see. Very well, I will leave thee. Stay,’ he told the slave, ‘and help the lady.’

‘I doubt I will see anything I have not seen before,’ Mélamírë said tartly, stepping down into the pool. ‘Not unless this Middle-earth is incredibly different to my own. And at this point I would bathe with Seran. I need to wash.’ She scooped a dollop of scented soap and lathered her hair twice, the slave rinsing it clean. The cool water running over her scalp felt like the end of a drought. Satisfied at last, she twisted the wet hair up on her head and soaped her body, sitting on a sill under the water, which was warm, heated before entering the pool, and constantly drawn out through submerged gratings. She cast curious glances at Vanimórë, whom has turned away, presenting his back.

He had tattoos. She would not have expected that; startling black tattoos that traced down his wrists and over his shoulders, down his back. She wondered if they denoted anything, or were simple decoration. Against the whiteness of his skin, they were almost unbearably savage. Dark Prince.

He rose from the water with a gentle splash. With his hair, like hers, coiled up, she could see where the tattoos on his back swept down to meet. Under them, at the base of his spine, glared a red eye. A frisson of some unnamable emotion sparked through. The eye looked alive, as if it glared at her, lidless, merciless, filled with fire.
Below it were taut buttocks, those long, long legs, hairless like his arms, not like the Elf-men she had seen, although he was not wholly Elf, so that could explain it, or the fact this was a different world to her own. He had the body of a warrior, all flat lines, taut muscle...then it vanished behind the swing of a large towel. He sat on one of the stone seats, drying himself, then pulled a comb through the long, wet lengths of his hair. It curtained him in a mass of gleaming black, which he drew up and let fall from a high plume.

‘There will be a meal set out in my rooms,’ he said. ‘Wilt thou join me? Or if thou art weary, food will be sent to thee.’

‘I will join you,’ she said. ‘If you tell me when I trespass too close to your private thoughts and memories.’

His smile was a little sad. ‘Scarcely private, when Sauron can sift through them like flour,’ he said. ‘And I did see into thine own mind, so I owe thee something for that. Simply that there are some things I do not wish to explain, that I do not wish thee or anyone to see. They are not...pleasant.’

‘I understand.’ She moistened her lips. ‘But you are over-protective. I have also seen things I did not want to, and certainly do not want to remember. But I will remember them. They happened. I cannot erase them, just as you cannot erase your memories. You showed me enough for me to believe that I came through the Threads, somehow, but there are other things I want — need — to know.’

‘Yes,’ Vanimórë said. ‘of course. If our situations were reversed I would certainly wish to know all I could, and thou art right. I am overprotective, at least when it comes to women. I failed her so badly —‘

‘— You didn’t fail her. If it had been me —‘

‘— It almost was thee. His servants are vile, Lady, and some of the highest are the worst. I would impale the lot of them without a blink. I am glad thou didst escape.’

So am I. The water began to feel cold. She sank down into it so that it lapped around her shoulders. ‘I was always too curious,’ she pursued. ‘but I did not pry into thy thoughts.’

‘I know that. I would have felt it.’ He folded the towel neatly around his hips as he stood up. His belly was flat and hard, like carved statuary. ‘Join me, then, when thou art ready.’

Mélamírë watched him leave. She could certainly appreciate a fine body and she had earned a look, she thought, since he had seen her when he found her. Or what there was of me, half-starved, skin and bone. And, although he had quickly (and considerately) veiled it, she was sure she had glimpsed a certain, familiar expression in his eyes when she entered the baths. She looked at the slave, whom had gone to her knees on the stone, her head bowed.
‘Get up,’ she said, a little impatient. ‘Tell me, did he ask you to take me to the women’s baths?’

‘It was so ordered, my Lady.’ The girl stared down at her wet feet. ‘But the slaves...it is not fitting a Shendi bathe with slaves.’

‘Hmm.’ She waded to the steps, welcoming the towel draped about her. Very well, Vanimórë, I’ll acquit you.

‘Would my Lady wish a massage?’ the girl inquired softly.

Mélamírë would. ‘That would be wonderful,’ she said.

OooOooO

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Chapter End Notes

* Tanout appears in A Light in the East, and A Far, Fierce Sky and later in Magnificat of the Damned Book III. He became one of the Immortal Khadakhir, the Guards of the Prince. The beautiful stallion Seran was also in the first two stories before he was killed by the Horde.