Strange Fates by PerpetuaLilium

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Soto

I’ve tried to institute a policy of explaining roughly what any significant stretches of Mattogó dialogue mean or are getting that either in the narration or through having Síreth interpret; I hope it works all right in this chapter and does not come across as too obtrusive.

My touchstones for this chapter were road narratives of the kind that Japanese literature has a lot of, particularly in the late medieval and early modern periods, which are in Japan very roughly 1300 to 1900 or so. I’m actually not as familiar with these road narratives as I am with certain other kinds of Japanese literature that I’ve been mining for structural and thematic elements in this fic so far, but I decided that I wanted to do something with them in the interests of making this part of the storyline more coherent and enjoyable than it would be otherwise—the experience of travel is something that I have a hard time really communicating in my writing without borrowing heavily.

Another thing I have a hard time with: Expository dialogue that doesn’t rely on certain speech conventions using which would make the characters’ registers seem far more synchronic than I want them to. I’m afraid I’ve had to resort to the infodump tactic in this chapter and may next chapter as well.

This chapter took a very long time to write and post. I've just finished my bachelor's degree and my personal life is very touch-and-go right now.

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They came at last to a hill that had a sweeping look out over the sea, and Síreth was uncomfortable to find that her heart was sore. The whole journey from Lothlórien had taken seventeen days now of the three weeks that they had been expecting, and from what she could tell of the way Hlocpath spoke to his men they seemed to be on time at least as far as he was concerned, but Sogdash was a little more worried and his worries were starting to come off on Eregriel, who had a way of absorbing such things like leavened bread dipped in rancid milk. So it was that Síreth, heart sore at Eregriel’s worries, came to her on that spring night on that hilltop, where she sat with her long legs dangling out over a precipice, looking out over the sweep down to a narrow pebbly beach and the choppy waters.

‘No Belegaer, this,’ Síreth said, by way of a joke.

‘That’s not funny,’ Eregriel said. She pulled her knees up from the brink and wrapped her arms around them, and leaned forward to take on the character of those pictures of the children quick in their mother’s wombs that one found in the anatomical textbooks. The silver glinting on her ring finger was against the green-white of her moonlit sleeve. The tangles of her dark hair went down through the light almost until they touched the rock’s white surface. Síreth, seeing as she stood there a flurry of silent sobs, knelt beside her and reached out around her shoulders. She pulled her from the side into a light embrace and waited for a roiling moment before she cleared her throat and spoke.

‘As we have come so far away,’ Síreth said, ‘on my account and ours, I admit—I know that there is not much to be had for you alone on this journey, as there is for me alone and for us together, and I know well why that is a hard burden for you to shoulder—I wonder if it may help you knowing that very soon we will come to Nacatscuni no Míaco, the Capital of the East, and there may at least rest from so long a travel as this.’ Put that way it seemed almost meaningless, destitute of any real consolation and obviously at that, and she felt worse after she had said it, and hoped only that she had not made matters worse. But Eregriel nodded, her chin digging lightly into Síreth’s sloping shoulder, and pulled her closer, and it was just as well.

After a few minutes Eregriel spoke. ‘I fear that we have come far away, not only from our home of these past short years that we have so far seen, but also from a home of much longer years that we hope and expect may come,’ she said. ‘I am growing impatient to see any of this new way of looking at things that we were hoping to find out here, among these people. Sharing stories with Sogdash, that is one thing, but it was something more and more personal than that, wasn’t it, what we decided to come out here seeking?’

‘Of course it was,’ said Síreth.

And for that reason—and it was plain as the moon hanging enormously overhead them that Eregriel knew this just as well as Síreth did, and it was plain that it was like a sword through Eregriel’s heart also—far less than wider-ranging stories could they expect simply to be told what to do about that most pertinent and precious and personal thing of theirs. There was a thick ache thereat, working its way up through her, and feeling that ache she was moved with a sudden rush of overwhelming pity not only for Eregriel’s doubtless similar and possibly stronger ache but for a sort of echoing pain, a sort of reciprocity of substituted agony, that she felt suspiring in the land around them, felt the way she had not felt any such thing suspiring in the Brown Lands, indeed almost since they had passed beyond sight and sound and evidence of Anduin. It is piteous! this land at the edge of what they called the Middle Country was saying to her. It is piteous, poor and piteous! Cawaisó de awareppoi, cawaisó de awareppoi des…! But the voices telling her this were joyful in their telling, like it was a game, this life of hers, in which they had gained some amused participation.

*

The next day they moved closer to what was called the Outermost Wall. It was difficult to speak of these Walls for the men with whom they were travelling, used as they were to the wide open skies and steppes of the wild North-East below the Iron Hills, but Sogdash, he who among them best knew the Capital and its surrounding lands, tried to explain as best he could, although Síreth, bone-tired, and Eregriel, still doleful, had to give all they had simply to be able to listen well enough.

‘There are eight Walls surrounding the Capital. Cabé—you could say it is a term of ceremony and specified use not in the usual way, since it does not mean necessarily what you or I might mean when talking about a wall. The four innermost are entire actual walls that surround the Imperial Palace and various parts of the Capital; then there is the wall that protects the area between the Capital and its port; then two rings of defensive forts around the Capital; and then there is the outermost Wall, which we will be within by sundown if we do not meet with any mishap. That is the boundary of Nacatscuni.’

Sogdash said that Nacatscuni was about fifty to eight leagues from edge to edge, broader from west to east than it was north to south; he said that the land through which they were now passing was tributary to the Emperor and was called Wa. Wa was an empty land and sweet, its hills skirting the Sea of Rhun like green pennons, and it was up over those hills in a series of listing tablelands that once there had been a culture from which the books that she had studied for Mattogó had come. On that day only twice did they come upon any of the Children of Ilúvatar—Men, both of them, of similar stature and ilk to Sogdash and Hlocpath and the others if a bit sallower, their eyes turned up in expectant curiosity. The first was a boy harassing a dog with a stick by the roadside where it ran below a place where houses stood on terraces cut out of the hillsides and the hills and trees complained in resigned irritation. The second was a couple, man and woman, approaching that strange territory of old age, who sat at a little way-station where Hlocpath stopped to pick up some provender for the horses, a cluster of buildings along the very brink of the Sea, their roofs pitched at steep and odd angles, their floors melting and cascading into each other through sliding and ambiguous doorways. They sat on their knees with cups in their hands steaming, of aromatic tincture of leaves, ‘as the periannath are said to drink’, Eregriel said. They sat on their knees sipping from the hot cups, and when Síreth and Eregriel came up and stood nearby them waiting for Hlocpath to return, they nodded with the considered politeness that Síreth had learned was the custom here, and they spoke of past possibilities.

‘Hisashiburi des wa,’ the woman said. ‘Cono mitshi iósé ga arucu no wa hontó ni hisashiburi des wa. ‘Itshidai no tenmé no utshi ni sore wo miru deshó to omotta coto wa nu…!’

‘She says it has been a very long time, Eregriel, since any of the Elder Kindred came by this way,’ Síreth said, ‘and she did not expect to see so much in her lifetime.’

‘How much do these people know of the policy of the Emperor?’ Eregriel asked.

All right. That was right. Since they were getting closer, it would be good for Síreth to start taking care to more regularly ask such things of the people that they met. The man said something inconsequential and then the couple turned back, and Síreth nodded as they had, and from the spot on the ground where they stood by the horses reached up to peer at them over the wall supporting the raised floor of the house where they sat drinking.

‘Tennó heica ni taishi toshté meshidasareta cara Míaco ni icimas,’ she said, knowing painfully that there were politeness markers here that she was missing.

‘Aa,’ said the man, ‘sasuga tennó heica no sésacu.’

‘That is very like—as expected of the Emperor’s policy, that he would call somebody like me as an ambassador, Eregriel,’ Síreth said.

‘Caco ni, oshinabete mitsumitsu, shisuca ni, cono cuni ni sundéta. Na no ni, Cabicusai no Toshi ni modoranu tame nareba…’

‘He says that in the past people lived more or less quietly and secretly in this country,’ said Síreth. ‘But now, it is…something different, I assume, he thinks is necessary in order not to return to the ‘Putrid Years’. Or perhaps that is an official policy that he is citing. It is what he is saying in any case.’

‘Sudé ni shte, otsha wo nondemitara dó des ca?’

‘He asks, in the meanwhile, why don’t we try joining them in—that drink that they are having.’

Eregriel smiled at the couple—it did not seem forced, at worst a little awkward and out of place, out of balance, torn out of the moorings of some actual understanding, but at the same time longing, powerfully desiring a togetherness that would be painfully far from that of the hope for the West that Eregriel feared, it seemed, was already becoming too tenuous. She smiled but then she turned around and marked right back over to where the horses were, her body framed against the lightly chopping waves of the windy white-silver sea. Was it the Breath of Arda that she was following, the Breath of Arda out there for her to follow? The strange pink trees in the courtyard thought so; they told her so, almost insistent about it.

‘Tabi ni tsutsucesaru wo enu,’ she said softly, with some sort of sadness towards them—she could not help but continue this journey, was the construction that she was using. She had been told that this evening once they entered the country proper Sogdash would tell them some things very important to the last few stages of their progression up to Míaco. Up to the Capital—that was how they always put it. It was not a heart for them, as Caras Galadhon was; it was a head. As with Caras Galadhon there were things directing about it and things sustaining about it, but rather than directing because it sustained, it sustained because it directed. Or that was, anyway, the account of how the people of Nacatscuni proper saw it that Sogdash had been giving them. Yes, yes, he would tell them much more important and serious matter in the evening when they would bivouac just within the borders.

Síreth stood out on the roadside looking over the waters. There was just a little bit of a drop-off here, barely a yard of scree-slope down into the water; this was with the tide high and the waves rising but even so Síreth imagined that from time to time this section of the road must flood, and leave travellers stranded for days, even, perhaps, at way-stations like this. It was an uncomfortable thought. The wind was stiff and salty. Yes, all the salt of Celduin and Carnen and the rivers to the south and east that they were passing over built up here; it was truly the Sea in that respect at least, lacking any outlet other than itself.

Eregriel too had come out here from where the horses were. Her eyes were fixed afar off, and Síreth took her hand and squeezed.

‘I would like to drink some of that tincture,’ Eregriel said softly, ‘when we have time—and learn to make it, even, if I can.’

‘Maybe the grains they eat in these parts, too?’ Síreth suggested.

‘Even better,’ Eregriel said. She turned with a smile. Her lips brushed up against Síreth’s cheek, just for a moment, and then they turned back to the land and ran back in to see how Hlocpath and Sogdash were doing.

*

The passage of the Barrier of Wa was a small matter in the end. This Wall, such as it was, was called Iama, a name it was said of Oromë. The Emperor had recently changed the names of the systems of Walls to honour figures of worship, Aratar or analogues of Aratar, and there was dispute and discord over this, as Síreth might well have expected. Eregriel was very interested in investigating, interrogating, pulling and picking through and apart what these figures of worship were exactly, how they were worshipped, what was believed about them, what stories were told—all things that seemed a little out of place as they passed through the palisades along the road at what was called the Great Gate of Daté.

‘One thing that you should know,’ Sogdash told them as they passed away from the sea up towards a pass in the hills, up a well-travelled way between far towns of clustered timbers in fields that spread out amidst the sparse forests, ‘is that you will be hearing a lot of talk about the Emperor’s consort. Now it is up to you how much attention you would fain pay this talk but I should say what some of them are so that you do not believe you will have come into a herd of wild bulls unawares.’ Whence this herd of wild bulls? Síreth’s image in her mind was of a storming, clashing, crashing thing, something of that nature. That she supposed made sense enough—like the den of an adder, and she did not know if Sogdash would ever have seen an adder before.

‘People will often blame a consort for the failings of a ruler if they seem not to be in conformity with how that ruler is generally seen,’ Eregriel said softly. ‘People inclined to recriminate Melian, even, not only for leaving Doriath as has bothered you when we have talked about this in the past, but for matters that she tried to warn Thingol very much against. If that fades after a while we find the consort’s name pass mostly unremembered thereafter—Melian is an exception to this. It’s only a few consorts who have been better-loved, in our history. Míriel in the most ancient of times and few others.’ She turned her face to Sogdash and Síreth with a sharp grin on it through the rising wind. ‘I do not think that I will put stock overmuch in whispered words about the consort of a reforming ruler unless you, Sogdash, or somebody else in our confidence tells me that I should.’

Sogdash thought about this for a second and then laughed. ‘That is the way it is,’ he said. Eregriel did not seem to find this as funny as he did. ‘But I do think that Princess Saiaca is all right,’ he said. ‘Her name is Princess Saiaca and Hlocpath has reminded me that with ellith as with the daughters of Men indeed it is likelier than not her court that they would direct you to first.’

‘Her court?’ Síreth asked in sudden alarm. She had not heard about this before. She had her own court? Had it any power? Since when had this system been in place—and had the Lady and the Lord known about this? Had they, mightn’t they have sent a man with them? ‘I had never heard of such a division.’

‘Please,’ said Sogdash as they breasted the pass through the hills, ‘do not let it be cause for dole or anger. For this reason exactly His Majesty the Emperor I am sure will give Her Imperial Highness all the knowledge and power and honour that she may need to see this through—or he may simply break with the way these things have been done before and bring you into his own court.’ He looked from Síreth to Eregriel and saw that Eregriel was looking back at him with her eyebrows curled down sharply and her nostrils flared, her back high and orgulous. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the way where I am from but it is the sort of thing that people in the Capital put a lot of stock in. I am heartily sorry that this did not occur to me earlier.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Eregriel, slipping into a somewhat uncouth voice as she tugged at her horse’s reins.

‘Eregriel?’ Síreth said as Eregriel’s horse paced to a stop. ‘…what is the matter? Do you need to stop? Would you like some miruvor or lembas?’

Eregriel stood a little space but then cracked the rains and rode up to them, looking tired and a little lost, but eager, or something like eagerness anyway. ‘Things are all right,’ she said. ‘Absolutely all right.’

Síreth was not sure that she believed that but for now it was possibly best to let Sogdash go on.

‘Her Imperial Highness Princess Saiaca married the Emperor five years before he came to the throne,’ he said. ‘Since she was not of one of the Great Houses of the Palace it was thought at first that her children would not be able to inherit—that after the Now-Reigning Emperor the throne would pass to the child of an uncle or a cousin, a collateral line, or even perhaps a sister’s-son were he to have any. His Majesty Haruca the Elder had done away with that custom by which the Imperial House of Nacatscuni used to take many wives.’ Síreth heard Eregriel retching behind her; like a bard telling a story, in its excess she knew that it could not be real, but even so there was that feeling, an unease, as if they were frittering away the known constraints of their inability to talk the loremasters out of the circles that they had drawn around themselves only to find themselves in unknown constraints of downright evil custom. This was a fear that Eregriel knew far better than she did and she found herself shivering in irritation at something that was working its way around and around in her skin uncomfortably. She took a drink of miruvor herself and felt better as they went on. ‘That was a decision that met with a lot of anger—still more,’ said Sogdash, ‘when Haruca the Younger took the throne and within the week overthrew that law which said that his children would not inherit. He has one daughter, Princess Dshóruri—should his sisters not have sons, nor he one in the coming years, Princess Dshóruri indeed will be our Emperor. But there was an uprising against this by the Great Houses of the Palace and the other noble families that dwelt in the Capital. It was Princess Saiaca who ordered the lines of battle as the uprising was put down, and Princess Saiaca who sent the troops out beyond the Wall of Amesaburó to the castles where those nobles had repaired to after being driven out of the Capital.’

‘I see!’ said Síreth. ‘Well that is remarkable.’

‘What you will hear,’ said Sogdash, ‘or may, is that in the years since, while she has been controlling by and large the movement of coin and movement of troops within the country, she has been clearly favouring people of her family’s own station or stations like it—that is, the artisans within the Capital and some of the wealthier peasants without, that this is unjust and against the traditions, that she has colluded with her husband to favour tributaries and dominions in the North and far East over against the people of Nacatscuni proper, and that she ordered half of her handmaidens killed last year out of unjust suspicion of a plot against her. The first of these charges is true, the second depends entirely on one’s own beliefs, the third is false because His Majesty if anything has carried on the traditional favour shown to his own people only that ones living outside the Capital itself are higher in his regard, and the fourth is false because Lady Bíacuren was caught blade in hand and was known to be close to most of the others.’

‘A herd of wild bulls indeed,’ Síreth murmured. Was it so difficult for them to turn aside? Was it so difficult for this country to understand that joining in the Watchful Peace and the leaguer of the uttermost East and avoiding the sad disasters of previous centuries was for the best? She supposed she could not really begrudge them that; Gondor might hate it too, this notion, and they had suffered on Gondor’s account at least as much as Gondor had suffered on theirs.

‘Some will call her glorious, a hero of faith and justice, mystical, otherworldly, because she has directed public worship around new ends, closer to ends that may be familiar to you,’ Sogdash said. ‘This is probably not too much worth giving your consideration either, not because there is anything wrong with that way of looking at things but simply because you will probably not yourselves find it so. She is a leader of something that you already recognise, in contexts in which you might already recognise it or find it even perhaps mistaken. So you should not pay that much attention either unless it interests you to understand why the common people of the Capital believe as they do.’

‘It does,’ said Eregriel without hesitation, and Sogdash appeared surprised, but happy.

‘Very well,’ he said as the continued to descend into the country of great watery fields before them, terraced fields along long broad rivers, passing north past scattering towns to a spurred gullet of the coursing inland sea. ‘That being the case I would also note that any degree of closeness will not seem untoward here. It will be questioned why neither of you have husbands; you may feel free to say whatever you will as although the question is asked most excuses are, for foreigners, accepted.’ Síreth looked at Eregriel. Eregriel’s face was downcast. ‘In the Emperor’s dominions there are many kingdoms. There are some where women do not as a rule marry until much later than others; there are some in which a man may still take more than one wife or a wife more than one husband.’ Eregriel retched again; more subdued this time, it seemed real, and Sogdash with concern said ‘Tumshuc is not one of these but it is a land where a head of household is a mother’s oldest brother, not a father. There are lands where the line passes through the woman and lands where an estate’s inheritance is with the last-born rather than the first. There are lands where two of the same sex may be given in marriage and lands where their heads would have been lopped from their shoulders until the Emperor Hanasono decreed it otherwise. The people in the Capital understand all this. They have their own ideas—men and women to live separately, for the most part; visiting each other when married, with children living mostly with the mother and passing sometimes between; men as having authority, women having freedom of their own thoughts; the whole world lived within walls, mostly, rarely venturing out—and you will come to understand those as they understand others in their turn.’

‘I see,’ Eregriel said, her mind clearly in a state of tumult and unclearness.

‘There will be expectations that you will bow, in certain situations,’ Sogdash said. ‘There will not be expectations that you will respond to some of what people say to you in poetry—people will recognise that you do not speak the language well enough, certainly not the dialect of the Capital, which has some differences with the others—but you may be expected to understand it if others respond to you in poetry. Her Imperial Highness is from a literary family and should be happy to assign somebody to help you with that. You will be expected to…’

They passed on into that country of broad rivers and flat fields, a score in the surrounding hills with their sparse woods rising into fastness, and on the shore of the great inland sea the castles and turrets that surrounded a vast and colourful city began inexorably to approach them.