New Challenge: Potluck Bingo
Sit down to a delicious selection of prompts served on bingo boards, created by the SWG community.
The day she had arrived to Rómenna with her family, after those terrible weeks of wandering across the Númenórean countryside, Fíriel vaguely remembered finding the house on the cliff a little intimidating, like the palace of an Elven king in a bedtime story. Since then, however, she had been brought there quite often, and the feeling of strangeness had largely subsided. The Lady Lalwendë sent many invitations to Grandmother to have tea with her, and for some reason she always took Fíriel for company, instead of any of her other cousins (they pretended not to mind, each in their own way, but she knew that they were jealous). Sometimes, while they were there, other members of the family -the House of Andúnië as everybody called them, even though they no longer lived in Andúnië- would show up too. She already knew Lord Númendil from the first night, that ancient man who did not look old, because he was descended from the Elves in the tales. His son ruled the house, but he did not look at all like him: he had a powerful voice and seemed to be always in a hurry. Fíriel found him intimidating, too, because he reminded her of the soldiers they had avoided on their journey East. So did his eldest grandson (Númendil’s great-grandson, but Fíriel had a headache whenever she tried to assimilate this), who had fought in the mainland before she was born. Grandmother had mentioned that he knew Father once, and that both used to fight side by side in Harad and the kingdom of Arne, but any curiosity Fíriel might have experienced in that regard would never be enough to persuade her to approach him. His younger brother seemed more approachable, and he had been polite to her the only time he joined his mother and Grandmother for tea, but to her great disappointment he did not have any interesting knowledge to share. Fíriel would not have admitted to such a thing, but she had never been so bored as that afternoon, while he droned on to the women about a business involving many complicated figures and something about road repairs. Luckily, Grandmother had noticed, and sent her away with as much discretion as she could.
Their father was Lady Lalwendë’s husband, and the tallest man Fíriel had ever seen, taller than the Elves even. In spite of that, Fíriel was not afraid of him; in fact, of all the people who lived in that house, she liked him the most after Lady Lalwendë herself. The first time she had seen him, he told her a story of the first time he saw her grandfather, who had been more or less the age Fíriel was now (somehow, the headache was not as bad when she thought about this, perhaps because Grandfather had been already dead when she was born, and she knew that he had been a short-lived barbarian). He had been carrying a bundle of clothes, and was so surprised by his height that he lost his footing and fell on his rear. Usually, Grandmother was upset when someone reminded her of her dead husband, but this time she smiled too.
There was also another lady in the house, who never joined them, though the Lady Lalwendë was her mother. Fíriel might never have known of her existence, if not because, on one of those times when she was told to “play quietly outside”, she had got a little carried away and sprung upon her while running through one of the stately corridors. The woman must have been standing still or walking very quietly, because Fíriel had not heard her approach. Still, the moment the girl had met those eyes –grey, just like those of the rest of the family and Fíriel herself- she grew aware that she had done something very wrong. She hurried to bow and apologize with fervour, praying that the woman would not be angry enough to tell on her, but the only reaction had been a short admonishment not to run, in a curt yet hoarse voice that made Fíriel wonder if she had a head cold. After they took their leave that day, she had asked Grandmother about the mysterious lady, trying to omit as much as she could of the circumstances of their meeting. Grandmother said that she was the Lady Ilmarë, daughter of Lalwendë and Elendil, and to the girl’s shock her eyes had a shifty look, as if she was the one who was hiding something from her granddaughter instead of the other way around.
This had happened months ago, and from that day Fíriel had never seen the Lady Ilmarë again. Still, she no longer ran through the corridors, but walked on quietly, wondering if one day she would manage to surprise her again. In the girl’s mind, the woman had acquired the status of an enigma that had to be investigated, and she did not want to be caught doing something wrong the next time they met. Her careful search had proved fruitless countless times, but it had become a kind of game of its own, which kept her entertained during the long summer afternoons. She would never have been able to make it last more than a minute in her own home, but this house was huge, full of pathways, courtyards and winding corridors which seemed built to play hide-and-seek for days on end.
Today, she had the determination to explore a large annex where she had only been once before. It had been back in early Spring, when days were shorter, so it was already growing dark by the time she ventured inside. This darkness had made the deserted corridors look a little more intimidating than what Fíriel was ready to take at the moment. Though ashamed at her own cowardice, she had fled, but she had vowed to herself that she would return, and this time, she would not be scared so easily.
At first, the place looked just as deserted as it had been back then, though the sunrays filtering through the windows gave it a warmer, welcoming look. At some point of her progress, she heard voices coming from the distance, but to her disappointment none of them was female. After a while, their volume grew a little, and she realized that they were approaching her current position. Just then, it dawned upon her that perhaps she was not meant to be here, as she had not asked for anybody’s permission before she came in.
With a small feeling of trepidation, Fíriel saw a gallery to the left of the corridor, which opened into some sort of backyard. The voices did not seem to come from that direction, so she rushed through it. Maybe that would be enough to avoid those men altogether, and if not, there was always something less -objectionable about being caught in an open space, even if it was also part of that large house.
As she emerged at the other side of the gallery, however, Fíriel had the sudden, sinking feeling that this open space was not like the ones where children were allowed to play. It was a small garden, so well-tended that not a single blade of grass seemed to be out of place, and the walls surrounding it were covered in a magnificent set of mosaics, depicting heroes and great deeds which she could not immediately identify as part of any of the stories she knew. At the very centre of the place, where four small pathways covered in some sort of gleaming grey stone converged, stood a strange plant, stranger than any the girl had ever seen. It looked like the sapling of some tree, except that its fledgling trunk was entirely white, and its leaves silver. Fíriel had never seen a tree like this: it was so beautiful that for a moment she wanted to cry. She managed to resist this weird impulse, but for a long while she stood there, gazing at it open-mouthed, her other thoughts and concerns entirely forgotten.
It was like this that they found her. In dismay, she heard a harsh voice behind her back, and her heart gave a huge jump inside her chest before it sunk so low that she could feel it pressing against her stomach. She immediately turned away from the tree, and to her great horror she saw a priest standing behind her, a thin man with a hairless head and a flowing white tunic. Back home in the West nothing, not even soldiers, had scared her as much as priests, who rode from the sanctuary of the Forbidden Bay in the South to terrorize the farmers in revenge for some offense against the High Priest’s authority that the people in Fíriel’s village had committed in the past. Whenever she saw one, no, whenever she heard one approach, she had been taught to run and hide, but there was nowhere to hide now. Her gaze darted here and there like that of a cornered animal, trying to determine whether it would be possible to run past him and make it to the gallery while remaining out of his reach. But then she heard a movement behind him, and of course, how could she have been so stupid, they never came alone, they were always in groups.
“What are you doing here, child?” the priest asked. He was old and wrinkled, with large, severe eyes that seemed to pierce her innermost thoughts. She began sobbing, though in silence, as she was too scared to make a sound.
To her surprise, the priest looked almost as flabbergasted at this as she had been to see him. He turned to the man behind him, and her relief was so great when she discovered it was Lord Númendil that her sobs turned into full-fledged crying.
“Is there anything I should know about what Faithful parents tell their Faithful children about me? If so, let me remind you that I never did any harm to your son, though sometimes the temptation became almost unbearable.”
Lord Númendil walked past him until he reached her, knelt on the floor, and pulled her into an embrace. This was so unexpected that it made Fíriel stop crying, though she still remained in that position, finding it so comforting and enjoyable that she could not bring herself to extricate her still shaking body from it. As long as she was there no one could hurt her, not even the priest.
“This girl’s family emigrated from the south of the Andustar months ago, Lord Yehimelkor”, Númendil spoke in a mild voice. “It is not you that she fears, but other priests who abused their holy office to terrorize those weaker than themselves.”
“I see.” The priest’s thin lips curved in a scary grimace. “No priest should ever have been allowed to rule over a territory, large or small, much less to become the largest landholder of the Island. Still, I guess I should derive some small measure of comfort from the knowledge that it is not my successor she has met.”
“That is true, Lord Yehimelkor. And we will have to make sure that she never does.” He turned his attention back to Fíriel then, gently disengaging her from the embrace to wipe her tears away with his fingers. “Fíriel, Lord Yehimelkor used to be the High Priest of the Temple of Armenelos…”
“Does he burn people?” she asked, before she could check her impulse. Lord Númendil looked dismayed.
“No, not at all! He fought those who did those things, and if my son had not offered him his protection, his life would have been in terrible danger because of it. He escaped a great evil just like you, Fíriel.”
“I suppose that is an accurate assessment”, Lord Yehimelkor nodded. Despite the fact that he did not seem to be a threat to her after all, she still did not want to look at him. “Well, I will take my leave now.”
Lord Númendil muttered an apology, though he did not prevent his departure, something which made the girl very glad. After the priest left, she felt such relief that she could have been floating off the ground.
“I am sorry. Really, really sorry. I will never wander off again or… come to this place, or anything. I did not know this was here”, she babbled, pointing at the beautiful silver sapling with the white trunk. Númendil gave her a grave look, but he did not seem angry.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked. She blinked, wondering what was she expected to reply to that. She had never been there, or seen that tree before today.
Before she could say as much, however, Lord Númendil continued speaking.
“Have you heard of Laurelin and Telperion?” he asked next, and this time she knew the answer to his question. Of course she had heard of Laurelin and Telperion, they were the Two Trees of Valinor which the giant spider Ungoliant had sucked empty, except for two fruits that became the Sun and the Moon.
“That is right” Lord Númendil nodded, pleased at how well informed she was. “Those Trees perished long ago, but Telperion left issue before it died.”
“Issue?” she asked, not understanding the word.
“A child”, he clarified. “A young sapling that grew into a magnificent tree, in Armenelos. It was known as Nimloth, and before you were born it still stood, fair and proud, as a symbol of the friendship of the Elves and the protection of the Valar.” His eyes became lost in one of the beautiful mosaics, and as Fíriel followed it with her own glance, she noticed a large white tree standing in the middle of the western wall.
“Is that… Nimloth?” she asked, struggling with the pronunciation of the unfamiliar name. Next to the likeness of the tree, she saw the images of two men who fought armed soldiers, and then what looked like the same tree again, being cut and engulfed by bright red flames. The fire came from an evil altar, of those she had sometimes heard the adults mention, where the priests of Melkor killed people by order of the King. “But they burned it!”
“Yes, they did. But before that, two brave warriors stole inside the Palace at night and stole the last fruit of the White Tree to bring it to us.” So those were the heroes depicted in that mosaic, Fíriel guessed, wondering why she had never been told that story before. All the tales she heard were always about people who had lived very, very long ago, in worlds that either did not exist anymore or were banned to mortals. “From that fruit, a new sapling grew, which you can now see in front of you. Just like its parent, Telperion, Nimloth perished, but its lineage survived through its only child.”
“Its issue”, Fíriel nodded, proud of the new word she had learned. Lord Númendil smiled at this, but then he grew serious again. He sought her gaze as if he was steeling himself for something.
“Do you know who those two men were, Fíriel? One of them was my great-grandson, Isildur, whom you have seen. He barely escaped the King’s guards with his life, and this was only possible because of the sacrifice of his companion, who allowed himself to be caught so Isildur could escape with his prize. “His frown became almost a wince. “That man was Malik, your father.”
Fíriel’s mouth flew open, and she let go of a gasp. Astonished, she sought the mosaic again for the figures of the heroic warriors. One of them, who carried something that must be the fruit Lord Númendil had spoken about, was surely Lord Isildur. The other was surrounded by a circle of men who were pointing his swords at him; his head was raised high, and he looked defiant. She noticed that the little tiles arranged together to form his head and hands were darker than those of the other figures: like Aunt and Zebedin and Eldest Uncle, and many other uncles and aunts and cousins she had met, he must have had darker skin than the rest of the Númenóreans.
Out of an impulse, Fíriel walked towards the wall, and touched the mosaic with her hand. When she stood this close, both her father and his opponents lost their stately shapes, becoming mere agglomerations of differently coloured tiles. This made her want to cry again, though she was not even sure why. She had always been aware that her father was dead and that she would never meet him, and also that she would never know how he looked like, unless she imagined it. But somehow, being so close to a likeness of him and yet unable to grasp the details was more frustrating than not seeing him at all. Soon, this frustration grew so much that it started looking for targets around her.
Why had nobody ever told her? Did they think she was still a baby, who would be forever satisfied with some vague mention to her father being a hero on the mainland? Did they think that they could browbeat her into falling silent when she tried to ask questions? What rankled the most was that not even Grandmother had been truthful to her. Now and then, she combed her hair, dressed her in her best clothes and took her up the cliff to have tea with these people, but she had never mentioned that Father had been so important to them!
“Do not blame your family, for they had good reasons to hide this from you”, Lord Númendil spoke, and her thoughts were in so great a turmoil that she did not even notice that he had somehow managed to be aware of things she had never said aloud. “Your father ran afoul of the King of Númenor himself, and was killed on his orders. If your family had started telling the tale of his exploit as if he was one of the heroes of your grandmother’s stories, the Sceptre might have heard about it, and its wrath would have fallen upon their heads and yours.”
“Was he a criminal, then?” she asked, confused. Númendil looked as dismayed as he had when she asked if that Lord Yehimelkor had burned people.
“He was not a criminal. The King was… wrong about him, but he has grown too proud to listen to our side of the story, and he rules Númenor, so we must do our best to abide by his laws. Still, your father was a great hero, and thanks to him my great-grandson lives, and the White Tree still remains among us, as a symbol of our alliance with the Valar and a sign of hope for the future of our people”, he explained. “The house of Andúnië will forever remain in his debt, and though he is no longer among us, we honour his issue as we would honour him.”
His issue. “I am his issue”, she deduced, her anger and confusion dissipating before a feeling of awe. “Like the White Tree.”
“Yes.” Lord Númendil beamed. “Exactly like the White Tree. Though he was also cut down, he left a last fruit to continue his line.”
Her awe gave way to a renewed onslaught of doubt.
“But…” The question would sound rude, but she did not care. “If my family did not tell me because it was dangerous, why did you tell me just now?”
“Because you are old enough to know. Because this happened long ago and we are safe now, or as safe as anybody can be in the Island these days” he replied, in a more forceful tone than she had ever heard from this man. “And because you should never apologize for stepping inside this place, as if you were a common intruder who had no right to be here.”
Fíriel considered this. Slowly, she retreated one step, then two, and three, until Father’s figure came back into focus in all his handsome, dashing glory. Like this, he looked like a somewhat strange, darker-skinned version of Húrin, Tuor or Beren, and all of a sudden she could not wrap her head around the idea that this was her father, Aunt’s brother from a house of half-barbarian village farmers.
Thanks to him my great-grandson lives, Lord Númendil had said. She remembered Lady Lalwendë’s eldest son, who had never looked particularly grateful whenever their paths had crossed. Perhaps he thought that letting his mother fawn over her was enough. At least now Lady Lalwendë’s attitude made sense. If Grandmother’s grief was any indication, a mother’s pain for losing a son should be unbearable, even years after it happened, and the lady’s son had not died only because Fíriel’s father had died instead. Now, Fíriel could not help but wonder if Grandmother resented her for it, somewhere deep down. Was she ever in pain whenever she saw Lord Isildur walking about, did she need to work hard to keep it a secret? Maybe that could also be the reason why he was always so guarded around them, because he did not want to face her with the knowledge of what had happened.
Only then, why would Grandmother say that Lady Lalwendë was sad because she had lost someone? If that story was true, Lady Lalwendë had no reason whatsoever to feel like this. It made no sense, even considering that Grandmother had been trying to hide things from Fíriel at the time.
“I seem to have answered a number of your questions, only for more questions to rise and take the place of the old”, Lord Númendil remarked, surveying her frown with a wistful look. “I will not tell you to forget them and pretend that nothing has happened, but you are an older girl now, and you are aware of other people’s feelings. And I know that you will be very careful not to bring any more pain to those who have already been hurt in the past.”
Fíriel was not used to be treated like an adult who could manage things on her own, let alone things such as these. This trust touched her heart, but her strongest determination to prove herself worthy of it did not avail her when a new, burning question appeared in her mind.
“And my mother? Who was she, and why did she die?” She winced when she saw him flinch. “Did the King kill her, too?”
“No”, a voice spoke from the gallery. “She died from grief, and she is buried in Andúnië.”
Fíriel stared. The woman who had just appeared was none other than the elusive lady she had been trying to find before this happened. Lord Isildur’s sister, her mind supplied at once, already in overdrive from trying to make sense of so many bits and pieces of the big mystery that her life had suddenly become. She looked as unfriendly as she had back when she scolded Fíriel for running inside the house, but this time her unfriendliness seemed directed at Lord Númendil instead of herself. Fíriel swallowed, her curiosity quenched by the sudden awareness of the conflict brewing around her. The woman’s eyes were colder than ice, and Lord Númendil looked down, as if he was feeling too weak to face her wrath.
“I w-will go find G-grandmother, if it pleases you, my lady”, she mumbled, wanting to flee this place as much as she had only a short while ago. She would only have paused in her tracks if Lord Númendil had called after her, but he did not, so she walked past the silent lady until she reached the gallery, then the corridor, which was now almost as dark as the day she had first ventured into this part of the house.
Once that she was out of their sight and earshot, something stirred inside her chest, and unable to hold herself back any longer, she broke into a run.
* * * * *
“I understand your feelings, Ilmarë, but there is nothing I can do about it.” Amandil let his gaze wander past his sullen-faced granddaughter, to meet his daughter-in-law’s pained expression and his father’s unreadable look. “These people decided of their own free will to leave their hometown in the southern Andustar to settle in Rómenna. I do not own the Andustar anymore, and I certainly do not own Rómenna, not even the plot of land where this house was built, as that still belongs to Father. And even if I did, I would not forbid entrance to people who are fleeing a terrible situation and looking for a better life only because it makes you uncomfortable.”
A terrible situation which many might see as his fault, no less, he thought bitterly. When he had been exiled from the Andustar, a great part of his former province had been returned to the lordship of the Cave, whose vindictive High Priest had not forgotten his hatred for Amandil nor the humiliation of his men at the hands of the villagers who had fought to resist his attacks in the past. As a result, his men had gone out of their way to turn the lives of their new subjects into a nightmare, raising the taxes and seizing any small pretext to wreak havoc upon those who did not comply readily enough. Aside from welcoming and helping all those who decided to try their luck in the East, the former lord of Andúnië had also written many petitions to the Sceptre, asking it to curb the insolence of the Cave. Since Ar Pharazôn barely set foot in the Island those days, those petitions had reached the Queen, who had ignored them all and allowed the situation to continue. Shortly ago, the King had returned from the mainland, it seemed that for a longer period this time, and this had decided Amandil to try once more. But his hopes were dwindling fast, as he was growing increasingly certain that leaving that hateful priest in charge had been just a way to circumvent that oath and get back at Amandil for his perceived treason.
“You could not be more wrong about me, Grandfather”, Ilmarë spoke, and he forced his thoughts away from that subject and back to the issue at hand. “I do not wish to abandon anyone to a terrible fate, and my personal comfort is not relevant to this discussion. I am glad that they have found a good life in Rómenna, how would I not? But that girl should not come here. How long will it be until everyone notices that she looks exactly like us? And how long will it be until someone establishes a connection between her family and the man who killed the Guards?” She had not spoken Malik’s name in years. “The Queen is looking for her, and I will not have her dragged to Armenelos to serve as the plaything of her abomination.”
“Do not refer to the Prince of the West as an abomination, Ilmarë”, Amandil intervened. In recent times, he had been hearing more and more voices in his vicinity parroting that theory, which was not merely cruel, but also dangerous. If such notions were to be attributed to the beliefs of the Faithful, they could be suspected of hostile intent towards the heir to the Sceptre, an accusation far more harmful than the usual distaste for their religious practices.
She snorted.
“I said it before the Queen herself.” And Ar Zimraphel had brought it up when Amandil himself was on trial, he thought, irritated at her stubbornness.
“That is not the point”, Elendil said, and Amandil was grateful for his intervention. “The point is that a boy who received his body and soul from Eru himself like any other human being does not deserve that name, no matter what evil sorcery others may have wrought around him.”
“I could not care less for what he deserves. Too many people have unwillingly laid down their lives for his sake.” She shrugged. “All I care about is Fíriel, and what she deserves. Some of you are behaving as if her danger should not be taken seriously. As if it was some hallucination that sprung from my feverish mind in a time of great grief and confusion. But I can assure you, it is not. I spoke to the Queen, and she said those words to me, as loud and clear as I am talking to you now.”
Quite unexpectedly, it was Anárion who spoke.
“And why would the Queen warn you of something that she wished to do, if she knew that you would take steps to ensure that she could not do it? Great-grandfather claims that she is far-sighted, but that is not the behaviour of a far-sighted person, it is the behaviour of a fool. Unless perhaps she could foresee that you would react like this, and that your reaction would somehow further her plans.”
Ilmarë first looked confused at this, then outraged.
“This is not a chess game, Anárion. It is reality”, she spat, her temper flaring anew. But Númendil raised his glance, and Amandil involuntarily turned to gaze at him.
“I agree with Anárion. What if the Queen’s intention had been to remove Fíriel from our sight so we could not protect her?”
“In that case, what would have prevented her from taking action long ago? She has been acting as sole ruler of Númenor for years, and we were an Island apart from Fíriel and her family”, Isildur intervened. That made sense to Amandil, too, but Númendil did not look discouraged.
“Perhaps she did not think it was the right time.”
“That is the most absurd argument I have ever heard!”
“The thoughts of far-sighted people might appear absurd to some”, Númendil retorted. Amandil gaped: he did not remember his father ever acting so contentiously. Perhaps Númendil was almost as surprised as his son himself was, when his attempt to pull rank as a far-sighted person made Isildur fall silent and look down.
“Was this why you told her things about her father and the White Tree that not even her own family had thought prudent to tell her?” Ilmarë picked up her brother’s slack. Númendil sighed.
“Yes. I felt I was doing the right thing, that she needed to know something of who she was and where she came from, before…” His voice trailed away, and though he had surely noticed the turmoil he had caused around him, he pretended that he had not. “But I am aware that I cannot expect you, any of you, to agree with me. Or her family, for the matter. I will apologize to them and make amends to the best of my ability.”
“Before what?” This time, it was not Ilmarë, or Isildur, who had raised their voice to interrogate Númendil, but Lalwendë herself. She had been sitting in silence until now, perhaps contrite because her grandmotherly weakness had caused this situation, but this prudent attitude had now given way to alarm.
“I am not sure”, Númendil replied, and Amandil was almost tempted to believe in his sincerity. “It is very hard to make sense of foresight. All I know is that she is standing at some kind of crossroads, and that she will need to be strong and proud of herself.”
“That does make sense”, Elendil came to his rescue. “I would not know about foresight, but I do believe that, at the end of the day, the last and strongest defence that we have lies in ourselves. We cannot protect our loved ones forever, for the time will come when they will have to face their fate alone, and there is nothing we can do to help them.” He gave a long, meaningful glance in the direction of his two most difficult children, and Amandil knew very well what was crossing his mind. So, apparently, did they, for none of them breathed a word.
“Very well, then”, Amandil took advantage of the momentary silence to intervene. “We will trust Father’s foresight to guide us, and Fíriel, in the right direction. And we will keep an eye on her, as much as we can, but without further disrupting her life and that of her family. We already did that enough”, he remarked, though he did not experience any satisfaction when he saw Isildur wince.
Ilmarë, on her part, merely fixed her gaze ahead, as if she had not even heard him. When her mother laid an arm over her shoulders, she did not shake it away. All of a sudden, Amandil felt the unseemly urge to go and apologize to her, for Fíriel, for Malik, for what had happened today and for everything else that had happened through the years. Even though a rational part of his mind insisted that her situation had not been his fault, and that no small part of the blame was to be laid at her own feet, it was as if those considerations simply did not matter. Her pain was too loud, too intense to leave space for anything else.
In the end, he settled for the simplest option, the concrete incident that he could still grasp.
“I am sorry for my earlier words, Ilmarë. I was worried, and I let my temper have the best of me. I do not believe that you would ever have anything but Fíriel’s best interests in mind.”
This time, her face betrayed a reaction to his words –a slight puzzlement, as if she had never expected him to say a thing like that. It hurt, though he did not allow it to show.
“I accept your apology, Grandfather”, she said, softly, as she and her mother rose and took their leave.
* * * * *
“So you have been receiving more petitions like this.”
Zimraphel nodded calmly.
“Three, to be exact. This is the fourth.”
“And you have not investigated them?”
She raised the silver cup to her lips, delicately holding it between two pale fingers.
“Why would I waste time and resources in investigating something that I know to be true?”
Pharazôn was about to eat the last mouthful on his plate, but he postponed the manoeuvre to stare at her in incredulity.
“So you have been just ignoring them? Is this the message that you wish to send, that anyone is free to devastate the Númenórean countryside because they have a grudge against their neighbour? This chaos already happened in the past, when your father proved too weak to intervene in the inner disputes of the lords of the Island. Now, I have been too busy putting down revolts and conquering new territories, but you were here! Do you want them to think that they can do as they please while you hold the Sceptre?”
For a moment, he thought that she would be upset at his words, but she remained quite calm.
“No. I have only been working with what you left me, Pharazôn.” Her gaze held a brief tinge of steel. “You did not want Lord Amandil executed, or murdered in one of Zigûr’s intrigues. You did not want civil strife, either. So I had him and his family exiled. But I could not exile all his people with him, for they were not guilty of any crime. You are the warrior, so answer me this, what happens when you lower your guard and your enemy stands right behind you, biding his time until your back is turned?”
Pharazôn’s planned reply to her first words died on his lips as her tirade progressed. He shook his head, trying to compose another, but he did not quite know how to begin. Not for the first time, his eyes wandered towards Gimilzagar, who sat on the table next to her. The boy’s attention was absorbed by his plate, where he had spent a long time carefully picking apart his food until every single bit of meat had been isolated from the rest of the ingredients and set aside on a neat pile.
“My enemy” he said at last, “is not a bunch of peasants who kneel before wooden dolls.” As he spoke, his mind was filled with a vivid memory of standing before a pile of corpses in a cold valley in Forostar, doing his best to appear nonchalant before the censure of those accursed grey eyes he was unable to forget, no matter how many years had passed.
Wouldn’t Ar Adunakhôr have been better served in his policies if he had not isolated them? If he had remembered that they, too, were his people?
“You have seen the power of religion with your own eyes”, Zimraphel continued, ignoring his thoughts. “And yet, you still act as if you do not understand it. Any religion is a force of its own, which can lend strength to the weakest person and turn them into a formidable enemy. If those who worship the Baalim see us as fell incarnations of the great evil that marred the world, this could convince them that nothing, whether it be treason, murder, or the risk of death, should be enough to stop them.” Gimilzagar ate a small mouthful of food, but grimaced at the taste, and pushed the meat so close to the edge of the plate that a few morsels fell from it, staining the pristine white tablecloth. “Let them all regroup in the East, under the watchful vigilance of the great army of Sor, and create a community there. This way, we will be able to control them, we will know where and who they are, and the Western coast will be freed of their presence. You know, as well as I do, whose emissaries used to land there in the past.”
The power of religion. Pharazôn remembered how he used to believe in all those superstitions, how their power had seemed so real to him back then. At some point he must have grown out of it, he supposed, and instead began using it as just one more weapon in his arsenal. Then, Zigûr had come to Númenor, and despite what Zimraphel might claim, Pharazôn had realized that religion could have true power after all, not only on minds but also on bodies and matter. But not any religion, Zigûr’s religion. The Baalim had not acted upon the mortal world since the Age of the Gods, as –at least according to Amandil’s beliefs- higher powers were not allowed to interfere with the fate of Men. This, however, had been shown to be a fallacy, which begged the next question. Were they unable to interfere, because they lacked the ability or the strength for it, or did they just not care? Or were they merely biding their time, and waiting for the appropriate moment? For if that was the case, Zimraphel was right, and the West of the Island should be rid of those who might believe it was their duty to welcome the enemies of Númenor with open arms. Ar Adunakhôr must have thought of that possibility, too, for he had chosen to send them all into exile. Not being tied by any inconvenient oaths, and having just emerged victorious from a fully-fledged civil war where his enemies had shown their true colours, he had been free to do so openly.
Zimraphel beamed.
“Yes.”
“I still do not like the idea of landholders believing they are above the law”, he frowned, unable to let go of his resistance entirely. He had never liked surrender. “I will set up another military governorship in the south of the Andustar; the Cave’s mismanagement of the whole area will provide me with the excuse to take away those lands from them. If the region must be watched, experienced men taking their orders directly from me will do it much better than petty priests who only care for their own pride.”
“That is an excellent idea.” The remainder of his food had grown cold by this point, but that was nothing compared with the disgusting mess on Gimilzagar’s plate. Now that the other issue had been dealt with, Pharazôn was growing more and more aware of how grating on the nerves his table manners were.
“Will you eat your food?”
The boy was so startled by this that he almost jumped on his chair. Pharazôn felt a familiar frustration gather in his chest. He understood that he had not spent much time with Gimilzagar because of the mainland wars, and that he could not expect the boy to be as comfortable around him as he was around his mother. That was why he was doing his best to bridge the gap, making time among his many obligations so they could be together as often as possible, and not only in ceremonies that involved cutting war prisoners open in the altar of the Temple.
So far, however, the Prince of the West seemed impervious to any attempt to sidestep that one negative experience and build a closer rapport. Sometimes, Pharazôn wondered if he was trying to figure out the amount of annoying behaviour he could get away with. That would not have been unusual, except that he would not even engage in such familiar tactics in the same way as any other boy of his age. Pharazôn had been a trying child once, himself, wilfully misbehaving at every turn and defying his father, who did not command his respect or his fear. Gimilzagar, on the other hand, might have been hiding under the table right now, if Zimraphel had not been there. Everything Pharazôn said or did seemed to be a source of alarm for him, and yet all this caution did not prevent the boy from acting exactly in the way that would bother him the most. If Zimraphel had ever been like him, as she sometimes claimed, he could not help but feel the first stirrings of sympathy for Tar Palantir.
“I am not hungry”, Gimilzagar said, looking at his mother and speaking in a low voice that perhaps he was hoping Pharazôn would not hear. He refused to feel challenged by this.
“What is wrong with the meat?” he asked, doing his best to sound as if he honestly wanted to know.
Gimilzagar turned towards him for a moment, then quickly averted his glance. Zimraphel pressed a comforting hand upon his shoulder, and he opened his mouth, frowned, then closed it again in dismay, as if balking at the unsurmountable difficulty of answering a simple question.
“Gimilzagar has not been able to eat meat since that day in the Temple”, Zimraphel spoke for him. “He says that the smell reminds him of it.”
It, Pharazôn thought, meant the onslaught of visions which had assaulted his son as he stood too close to one of the barbarians and somehow became able to see through his eyes. The mad idea that perhaps Gimilzagar hated him because his enemy’s thoughts had become stuck inside the boy’s mind, which Zimraphel had dispelled back then, briefly crept into his brain again- and with it, the sudden image of Amandil laughing at the irony.
“Do not eat it, then”, he said, his voice slightly raised. “Refuse the sacrifice of the cow that was killed to nourish you, as you would refuse the sacrifice of those who were killed to give you strength. Perhaps you wish to remain weak for all your life, and hide behind that excuse to avoid facing your fears!”
Gimilzagar’s eyes widened, and he began to sob. Gazing at Pharazôn with a reproachful look, Zimraphel pulled him into a comforting embrace.
“Your father did not mean it” she said, and he was too taken aback to challenge this. “I will have fish brought to you. You love fish, don’t you, my dear? When we are in Sor, we will see the Sea, and you can go fishing if you want.”
“What?” Still out of sorts, it took him some time to realize what she had said. “What do you mean, when we are in Sor?”
Every once in a very long while, Zimraphel had the good grace to look abashed.
“I was going to tell you”, she explained. “While you were in the mainland, I promised Gimilzagar that, once you were back in Númenor, I would be free to spend the summer with him, wherever he wanted to go. Now, it is summer and you are here, and by the looks of it you are going to be busy investigating the Cave’s misdeeds and establishing that military governorship in the Andustar. So Gimilzagar reminded me of my promise, and he said that he wanted to see the Sea.”
The boy had stopped crying now, and was listening in to their conversation with a hint of trepidation. Pharazôn shook his head, not even knowing what to say.
“But you hate the Sea”, he managed to articulate at last. “You hate running water of any shape or kind. You had the fountains of the Palace go dry because their sound disturbed you. And now you are telling me that you want to leave Armenelos for a pleasure trip to the seaside? When exactly were you planning to tell me?”
“Mother…” Gimilzagar tried to chime in, his forehead beginning to curve in a frown. But she did not let him intervene.
“Anything that makes Gimilzagar happy will make me happy”, she said, firmly. “I am in control of my demons now, Pharazôn. And one day he, too, will be.”
The boy’s attention shifted towards him now. Pharazôn sighed at the pure, undisguised longing in his gaze.
“If that is the case”, he said, forcing himself to measure his words carefully, “I could never object to something that makes both of you happy.” Even if your son’s happiness does not include you, the sarcastic voice whispered in the back of his mind, but he did his best to ignore it. The truth was that Zimraphel had time for him, and for a well-deserved rest after years of trials and paperwork and ceremonies and Council meetings. Ar Pharazôn the Golden did not. The day he surrendered the reins of all this again, it would not be to retire to some secluded spot where he could while his days in idleness and games, but to wage war on the mainland. Right now, at least, there was peace, a peace so firmly imposed that it might be a while before anyone would think of revolt in any of the Númenórean territories again. Ironically enough, the resistance posed by those with the reputation of being the fiercest tribes had been the first to crumble, when the Númenóreans started dealing with them in the same way in which they had dealt with others in their own wars. As Zigûr had put it, it was usually the weakest who tried to hide behind a shield of grisly legends of what they would do to their enemies. The strong, meanwhile, would waste their advantage trying to civilize others, and labour under the delusion of being heroes, who acted with nobility and clemency. That was why their respective forces balanced out, and why none of the previous Kings had been truly able to solve the Haradric problem.
Solving the Haradric problem, however, had never meant so little in the larger scheme of things. For now, Númenor had borders in lands whose existence his predecessors would not have been able to imagine, borders that made them vulnerable to the invasion of peoples whose very names they did not know. And in the end none of those high-sounding excuses even mattered, as the truth was that they needed to go to war, for the might of Númenor was at the brink of spreading too thin, and the only thing that could keep this great empire together was the protection of the Great Deliverer, the Lord of Battles, in exchange for souls.
Not for the first time, Pharazôn tried to imagine Gimilzagar dealing with this. Would all the souls in the world make him strong, not just in body but also in mind? Zimraphel seemed very certain of it, and though her foresight had always been true, it had never been as susceptible to be clouded by feelings as it was now.
“Thank you, Father”, the boy mumbled, and the unexpected sound of his voice jerked him away from his dark musings. At first, still caught in the drift of his thoughts, he could not understand why Gimilzagar would thank him, unless it was meant as an ironical retort to a father who thought him incapable. But then, he realized that the Prince had never antagonized him in such an open way, and that it was unlikely that he would do so now. And as he thought this, he suddenly saw a flicker of sincerity, timid yet real in Gimilzagar’s eyes.
Another moment of pondering the boy’s inadequacies and trying to twist his words into something unpleasant and he would have missed it. Perhaps nothing was wrong with Gimilzagar after all, he thought, but with him. Once, Amandil had predicted that he would fall under the lure of Zigûr and that the former Dark Lord would make him hurt those he wanted to protect. This had never happened in such a dramatic way, but perhaps there was such a thing as so much blood and death that one was rendered unable to dine with his own son.
He is ten, Zimraphel had said to him, back when they had quarrelled after the ceremony at the Temple. Ten, Pharazôn. He has been sick at least half of that time, and he sees things, feels things that he cannot even make sense of. He will have many years to grow used to the sight of death, to stand strong and proud among the assembled people of Númenor, and even to follow you in your wars and fight our enemies. But he is a child now, and children are weak, even those who were not born dead. And until they grow into their own, they have to be protected.
Where was this impatience coming from? Gimilzagar had been born much later than any other heir to the throne of Númenor, and at a key moment of its expansion. But Pharazôn was still in his prime, even more now that he knew how to renew his youth and vigour so they would last longer than those of his predecessors. Gimilzagar would have enough time to grow, and who knew? if Zigûr’s promises had not been empty, the King of Númenor might even have a chance of conquering immortality before the end. Was he starting to think like the barbarians, who taught their cruel ways to their young because they were unable to escape the poignant awareness that they could be dead the next day?
Why are you so frightened? Amandil’s mocking voice asked. Don’t you rule the world now?
“Have fun in Sor, my son” he said, forcing himself to smile in defiance of all this. “I am sure that you will love the Sea. And the Arms of the Giant, though I must warn you that the statues cannot be climbed. I know, for I tried once.”
“You were found hanging from the Wolf’s tail, and had to be rescued. The late Princess of the South almost had a fit that day.” Zimraphel smiled. Thank you, her black eyes were saying.
They had time, he thought, even as his patience was further tried by Gimilzagar eating his fish in a very slow show of quiet enjoyment, and then, as the candles in the large crystal lamps flickered and almost became extinguished, his dessert. Even enough for children to be allowed to be children, if they had to.