Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

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North and South I

This part might feel a little rambling, but sometimes it's hard to take the characters to the place where they are supposed to be. :( Also, for the Pharazôn and Gimilzagar part, from this chapter on, it might be useful to remember the companion story "The Chosen".

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Isildur leaned on the railing, gazing in silence at the chain of mountains that stood guard over this mysterious land, their peaks hidden under an impenetrable mass of cloud. The sky above his head had been growing greyer as the day progressed, as it had happened increasingly often since they crossed the Númenórean frontier, marked by the mouth of the Agathurush and the garrison and harbour of the Middle Havens. Soon, the rain would start falling in quick and violent showers, accompanied by sudden gusts of wind, which would cease only to leave a veiled sun in their wake. The pale rays of that sun, however, gave such little warmth that their clothes would remain wet until they huddled around the stove to dry them.

Now you know why the King does not want to come here, Malik often said. Still, according to the Middle Havens commander, the weather was not so bad after one grew accustomed to it, as hard as this might seem to a newcomer to believe, and summers were very beautiful. Isildur assumed that anyone forced to live there for years would need to find comfort in something.

Back when they landed in his dominions, and warily accepted his insistent invitations to share meals –both Isildur and Anárion agreed that they would not accept any offers to spend the night in his guest quarters, no matter how inviting beds could look to them at this stage-, the man had proved quite loquacious, and not just about the weather. Anárion had remained suspicious, measuring his every word and gesture while they were in the Commander’s presence, but Isildur’s instinct told him that this was not like the false geniality of the Magistrate of Pelargir. The man seemed genuinely lonely, and eager to exchange news with someone other than his underlings and the sullen-faced barbarians who brought the timber from upriver to ship to the Númenórean territories. After the first day, they discovered that the son of the Magistrate’s associate, the one who had been “recommended” as a source of information to them, was chiefly responsible for making his life miserable. Banished here because his father had been shamed by his behaviour in front of his peers one time too many, he was on a mission to build “a name” for himself and show his family how wrong they had been about him –which apparently involved trying to get his superior framed for incompetence so he could have his post, and bribing everyone in his way to turn them against him.

As for the barbarians living in this part of the world, the Númenóreans of the Middle Havens all agreed that they were among the worst one could meet in any area of the mainland. They were uncouth, ignorant savages in peace, and downright vicious in war. Their very appearance was repelling to the eye, for they did not cut their hair or their beards for any reason, and they had it as a point of honour to wash their bodies as little as they could. Back when they had been Forest People, it was told, they had used dirt to camouflage themselves and ambush their enemies in the wilderness, but now that they spent most of their days doing honest work, the stench of their unwashed sweat would give them away before they were even in the enemy’s line of sight. Still, they kept a stubborn adherence to their customs, too proud or too stupid to realize that they had not made sense for a hundred years.

In the early years of Tar Palantir’s reign, before either Isildur or Anárion had been born, there had been a great uprising in these lands, when the natives decided that the treaty they had signed with the Númenóreans in exchange for protection against a horde of Northern invaders was no longer valid. After it was quelled, many of the Forest People, especially the younger and more able-bodied among them, had fled North, looking for new places to live away from Númenórean rule. They had formed large bands under the command of their fiercest warriors, and the thin veneer of civilization they had acquired from cohabitation with the Sea People had fallen off as easily as an ill-fitting garment. Some of them managed to drive off their even more savage cousins from their lands, where they built their own settlements; others had perished in the attempt, and there were stories about a third group which had travelled even further, beyond the reach of knowledge or rumour.

The Commander of the Middle Havens cared little for those stories. He had been appointed with the sole purpose of guaranteeing the production of timber, so nothing that did not threaten it directly was considered his responsibility. Whatever lay North of the river only interested him when the warrior bands disrupted the cutting or the delivery process, increasingly drawn out and difficult because of deforestation, or when too many workers tried to flee beyond the frontier to try their luck with their sundered kinsmen. Five years ago, he told them, he had sailed there at the head of his troops, burned a few villages and made a large number of prisoners that he had sent to Pelargir, where they turned up their noses and sent him word that they were barely good enough for sacrificing. Whatever they had done with them down South, however, the rest of their people had remained rather quiet since then. He did not know how long that would last, for their memories were short, and their persistence quite notorious, but he prayed that the day they grew bold again, that insolent young dissolute would have to deal with it and discover that money and birth were of no use whatsoever before a rabid pack of savages.

“It sounds like a terrible situation”, Anárion had remarked, once they left the man’s fireside after an especially late drinking session. Before they undertook this trip together, Isildur had not believed him capable of voicing any of his insecurities- in fact, he had not even been aware that his brother had any. But since their brush with death in Pelargir, something seemed to have changed inside him. It could be misunderstood as proof that he was still feeling out of sorts, but Isildur suspected otherwise: his brother was just doing what he usually did, which was to adapt to the circumstances around him. He had assimilated to his new role in this new land, and understood that it required him to admit that he did not have everything under control and look to others for counsel. “From what Grandfather told us, I already knew this was an unfriendly area, but to deal with so many years of deep-seated grievances? How can there ever be peace between them and our colonies?”

“Easily”, Isildur shrugged. “Our host seems to have managed well enough.”

“By curbing their aggression with more aggression! Even if that was an option in our circumstances, would that make us any better than they are? This is their land, and they were here long before we came!”

Isildur had not been wholly serious, as it could be expected after all the wine he had drunk. Still, what Anárion said was something that he could not accept either. People who had never been outside the Island often spoke like this, he had heard it all more times than he could count, but their idealism never lasted long.

“Why, you sound like them now, awarding land ownership as if it was a right held since time immemorial! But you are not one of the short-lived folk, and you have access to ancient memories and written records, while for them ten years ago was already the remote past. In truth, these tribesmen came by this land because they slaughtered or drove away their previous inhabitants, and we know for a fact that they did the same in the places where they live now. If we were to drive them away from where they are, they will go somewhere else.”

“Except that the Forest People did not go away, according to our host. They remained here, right beyond the border, waiting for an opportunity to revenge themselves on the Númenóreans and regain what they lost. They have been doing so for a hundred years now. “Idealist or not, Anárion never ran short of rational arguments. “How would it be any different for us?”

“Because the Númenóreans did not let them go. They fled, while their families had to stay and do the dirty work of their enemies. They are held against their will, and treated like cattle. Poor neighbours always raid rich neighbours, no matter whether they are treated ill or not. You should have been in the Vale of Arne to witness by yourself how the mountain folk fended off each and every one of our attempts at friendship and alliance, as a life of plunder and banditry was all they knew. But the Middle Havens keep no riches, no granaries, nothing but shiploads and shiploads of timber, which the tribes have no use for. If they keep coming, it is only because they remain aware that half of their own people is still hostage to the People of the Sea, and this keeps their wish for revenge alive.”

Anárion seemed to ponder this for a brief moment.

“So, you would drive them away without hard feelings, let them take their kin with them, and expect them to go quietly and never come back?” He shook his head in incredulity. “You mock others, but perhaps you are not free from the shortcoming of idealism yourself.”

“Oh, I do not expect all of them to leave.” The pleasant, wine-induced haze was almost gone now. “As I said, poor neighbours will always raid rich neighbours, hard feelings or not. But that would happen even if we had not stepped a single foot on their territory, took any of their lands or fought any of their tribes. It is the way of the world. You could beg them for their friendship and shower them with gifts, grain, and precious metals, and they will merely think you weak and demand more. Forget about having them live among your people, for they will never respect any laws. If it is idealistic to believe that we cannot stop this, but only take steps to limit its impact, then the word no longer holds the meaning I knew. But then again, I have never been a very learned man.”

“So”, Anárion concluded, “if I have understood your point correctly, driving them away with all their people would limit the impact of their plunder and robbery to a tolerable amount. Perhaps we would not need to sacrifice them to Melkor, then?” His irony was subdued, but no less clear from his tone. “In any case, you speak as if you were the King of Númenor. As if we could order the Middle Havens garrison to be disbanded, halt the timber production and let the Forest People go where they will. But we have no power to do any of those things. If we founded a settlement somewhere North of here, we would have to contend both with their normal raiding disposition and their hatred of Númenóreans. And, as the Magistrate already warned us, no might of the Sceptre to back us in our endeavours. Would you leave any colonists there, knowing that next year you could find them all slaughtered?”

That, Isildur had to admit, was a very reasonable point. How his brother was able to turn the tables on him in this manner was a mystery that would escape his brain even if it was not the tiniest bit clouded.

“Then let us hope, for the sake of our endeavours, that there will be less dangerous territories farther up North”, he said, with a shrug. “And that the Elves who live there will have more useful intelligence to share.”

He had expressed this wish more as a peace offering with which to bring their disagreement to a close than anything else. But if he was to be completely honest, Isildur still had not managed to see this colonizing venture as his endeavour. He had embraced it as an opportunity to leave the Island behind and escape his demons, but he did not fancy acting the diplomat, and playing house at the ends of the world would suit him even less. Anárion, not to mention his wife-to-be, would probably delight in measuring perimeters, dividing fields, planning the disposition of buildings and laying down laws, even in trying to establish alliances with neighbouring peoples. For that, peace was a necessary requirement, but it was not so for Isildur. War suited him just fine: he would even revel in it, after so many years of being unable to raise his sword against the enemies who surrounded him.

So, because you cannot fight the bigger bully, you will take it out on this people. Isn’t that behaviour just like theirs, when they drove others away because they were fleeing the Númenóreans? Malik said, leaning on the mast with a reproachful look. Isildur shook his head.

“You know I do not judge them. Just as I would never have judged your grandfather for killing the Númenóreans who killed his people. We all do what we must to survive. And if my elders and betters claim that we need to settle in these lands to survive, they must be aware that we will need to kill others to do so.”

And that makes you happy.

“Would it help anyone if it made me miserable?”

I remember when we fought in Harad, and the Vale. If you look back on it, it was very bleak business, wasn’t it? We saw terrible things, did them, and narrowly escaped them more than once. Yes, we had each other, and that is enough for us to think of it as a fond memory. But you know that, even if you were to return to all those places, and do the same things over and over again, none of it would be enough to bring me back. Tell me, Isildur, will you still feel the same way about it then?

Isildur tried to swallow, his eyes lost in the white lines of breaking waves near the shore. It seemed like an easy task, but it proved surprisingly hard to accomplish.

“I do not know, Malik”, he replied, with a sincerity that felt painful even as he forced it out of his system. “All I know is that part of my soul is still there, in those desert roads and jagged precipices. Just as part of your soul is still here with me. You, of all people, should understand.”

The ghost remained silent. As Isildur managed to breathe regularly again, the sun emerged from behind the clouds, wringing a golden gleam from the surface of the Sea in a bay that stretched ahead of them, presided by the twin promontories of a narrow strait. Just at that moment, Anárion approached him, so quietly that he had to wonder if he could have been listening in to the conversation.

“According to Father’s maps, that should be the gulf of Lune”, his brother informed, in a low voice which belied the excitement in his eyes. “Do you see how the clouds part and the weather changes when we approach the land of the Elves?”

“Well, if they know how to command the elements, that might come in even handier than their intelligence”, Isildur replied, hiding his turmoil behind a joking tone.

While their small fleet progressed across the gulf, however, and despite his initial disbelief, he had to admit that the weather changed a little too drastically to attribute it to chance alone. They sky grew cloudless, the afternoon sun glowed as bright as it did on a spring day in Andúnië, and even the wind disappeared, bringing in a mild temperature which made him long to discard his cloak. Shielding his eyes from the radiance, Isildur saw shapes moving in a venerable-looking watchtower that stood on one of the promontories.

“They have spotted us –and hopefully also our flags, if their eyes are as keen as they say”, Anárion remarked. “I doubt that regular Númenórean ships are still a welcome sight among them.”

This remark made Isildur think. He had no doubt that the sentinels were able to see that they came in friendship, but if they had been a fleet sent by Ar Pharazôn, would the Elves be able to successfully drive them away? They might wield magic to protect their dwellings, but so had Sauron, and it had availed him nothing before the relentless superiority of the Númenórean army. According to their great-grandfather, who had lived here for a long time, Elves were fewer than Men by this point, for they did not bear many children, and there was an endless trickle of emigrants taking ship for the Undying Lands. Sometimes, Isildur had heard his kinsmen ask themselves why had Sauron not counselled Ar Pharazôn to conquer Lindon yet, given the hatred that the Deceiver harboured for his enemies of old. Númendil always kept a troubled silence during those discussions, which made Isildur think that he might have received some disquieting glimpse of the future that he was not ready to share with the rest.

In any case, their small fleet was soon approached by three boats, whose manoeuvrability and speed surpassed even those of the Númenóreans. The Elf who hailed them had hazel eyes and a very melodious voice, which contrasted sharply with theirs, making them sound almost like barks. He was one of the local Sindar, and though he sounded friendly enough in his address, it soon became apparent to Isildur that language would pose a problem. At home, they spoke Quenya amongst themselves, but he had not had the chance to practice Sindarin since he was tutored in it as a young man. Not for the first time, he wondered why it was so, considering that most Elves in Middle Earth did not even speak Quenya at all, and the Blessed Realm had not sent ships for centuries. At some point, he supposed, the proud wish to alienate themselves from the rest of the Númenóreans must have turned into a goal of its own, unimpeded by such mundane considerations as communicating with their allies.

Thankfully, he had Anárion with him, who greeted the envoy with enough fluidity as to make up for Isildur’s lack of response. They held a brief exchange afterwards, which Isildur was only partly able to follow, though he still nodded along. In the end, that is what you always do, even when the conversation is in plain Adûnaic, Malik snorted. Now, you just have found a better excuse.

“We have been invited to spend the night as guests in a nearby coastal town, and to proceed to the Grey Havens in the morning”, Anárion translated, after their interlocutor had bowed gracefully to both of them and returned to his boat. “Their lord, Círdan, will meet with us there. I do not think he speaks Quenya, either.” His look grew reproachful. “Isildur, don’t tell me you did not brush up your Sindarin at all before our journey! I spent months doing it, and practiced my conversation with Irimë, who was learning it along with me. If you had told us that you required help, we would have been only too glad to be of service!”

Isildur stared at him, not knowing what to say. When his brother put it like this, it seemed as if it would have been the obvious thing to do, but somehow he had not even thought of the possibility. Perhaps because the Anárion he had known in Númenor was not a person he would have asked any kind of personal favours from.

Or perhaps because the Isildur your brother knew in Númenor was an idiot.

“Never mind”, he shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “You are better at doing the talking anyway.”

Anárion’s brow creased in a frown.

“You do not exactly make that difficult.”

“So?” It may have been months since he had last seen this peevish, petulant mood in his brother’s countenance. “I do not begrudge you your ability. In fact, do you know what? If I ever get to be the lord of something, I will still let you do the talking.”

“Then you should be careful, lest people forget that you are supposed to be their lord at all”, Anárion retorted, before turning away to start giving instructions to the men.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

The first stages of the trip had turned out better than what he had expected. So far, there were at least two occasions in which Gimilzagar had managed to prove his fears wrong. On the eve of their departure, the Prince had stood through the entire ceremony in the temple of Sor without either flinching, making faces or looking away –even though he disappeared by the end of it and stayed in his room for the rest of the day, at least he had the decency to keep his weakness private-, and when their ship left the harbour for the open Sea on the next morning, he had remained on deck, staring at the receding silhouettes of the Warrior and the King and the endless blue plain ahead of them, instead of locking himself in his cabin to throw up his breakfast. The boy had always had some kind of affinity with the Sea, as confirmed by the fact that he had met that girl gathering shellfish on a beach, but Pharazôn had not thought it would be enough to cancel his uncanny ability to embarrass his father in front of other people.

Now, however, he felt that he had to re-evaluate his impressions. Gimilzagar had improved, and Pharazôn was tempted to attribute it to that conversation they had during the Prince’s sword practice session. Which would be quite ironic, as Zimraphel had been telling him for years that he should be very careful about what he said to the boy, and he had often heard her weave fantastic tales to convince their son that he was not inadequate, that his powers were so great that common mortals could not understand them, and that he did not need to change because the world itself would change to accommodate him. All that claptrap had not had any visible effect on Gimilzagar’s behaviour that Pharazôn was aware of, while the honest truth alone had brought a positive change.

Then again, he thought, any arguments he might have gathered to prove that her approach was wrong and his was right had remained unused in the end. True to her form, she had taken him off-guard by displaying the total opposite behaviour from the one he had expected. He did not know if the Prince had run crying to her or not, but she had not challenged Pharazôn, not when he came up with the idea of dragging her precious son to the mainland, nor when he told Gimilzagar what Númenor stood to lose from his succession. As always, Pharazôn had not been stupid enough to confuse this acquiescence with surrender, and his most immediate thought had been that she must have some glimpse of the future that she had not bothered to tell any of them. Courtiers and councilmen used to grumble through their teeth that Pharazôn trusted no one, that he was ready to believe the worst of anyone without proof while he dismissed good intentions as a barefaced lie. The truth was, that blind trust in Zigûr’s grand projects and Zimraphel’s mad visions required so much of his efforts, brought him so many sleepless nights, that he had no more to waste on anyone else.

That was why he was always happy to take ship to the mainland, and concentrate in those tasks that neither Zigûr nor Zimraphel could interfere with, though they still derived their power from them. As he had told Gimilzagar, the Númenórean empire could only be made or unmade by the strength of arms, and foresight and sorcery could be of great help with this, but they would be worth nothing without a good general who knew his business and was followed by his troops. A defeated enemy who could not even hold his own fortress and a woman were both incapable of fulfilling this role. Without Pharazôn, in fact, Zimraphel would be nothing but a puppet ruler now, married to some fool against her will, and Zigûr would not have human lives to invoke his magic from. And Gimilzagar, even if he had managed not to die in infancy or succumb to one of the attempts of the Baalim-worshippers who wanted him dead, would grow into an even weaker Tar Palantir, under whose rule the mainland empire would be broken into a hundred pieces while the Island descended into chaos. The greatest sorcerer or visionary in the world, without a strong army to support him, was just a madman –or a freak.

“And how is it possible to anticipate exactly how long will our ship take to cross the Sea?” In his vicinity, Gimilzagar was pelting the captain with curious questions, which the man was trying to answer to his satisfaction.

“It is possible to calculate it from the nature and trajectory of the winds and currents, my lord prince. Back when I started sailing, we could only give estimates, for currents were easy to predict, but the wind could change at the slightest whim of the gods. We could even lose our lives, if we had the misfortune of becoming caught in a bad storm! But this changed since the lord Zigûr came to Númenor. Now, we always know that the wind will be favourable and swift, because he taught us how to get the gods to listen properly to us and grant us our wishes.”

“Oh. I see.” Gimilzagar looked a little thoughtful as he nodded. Pharazôn wondered if getting evidence that the sacrifices benefitted everyone around him in ways he had not previously considered would distract the boy from that stubborn fixation with his own responsibility. “So we only have to send advance notice from Númenor, and the people in Umbar will know exactly on which day our fleet will arrive.”

“Indeed, my lord prince. Once that we cross the First Wall, you will be greeted by the sight of all the loyal Umbarians gathered in the harbour to catch a glimpse of your august countenance. I am sure the whole city will be astir, since it is the first time that their beloved Prince of the West sets foot in any of the territories of his mainland inheritance!”

“Is it true that the First Wall is made by reefs, and that it was not built by the hand of man?” Gimilzagar asked, ignoring the man’s rosy anticipations of the colonists’ reaction to his presence. Perhaps he was apprehensive enough about it to wish to put it out of his mind –he had always disliked people-, or perhaps he was disillusioned enough not to set store by those flattering half-truths. Pharazôn had always liked to see himself as jaded, but deep inside the Golden Prince had taken universal love and admiration for granted since he was a child, and though others would never guess it from his attitude, he still felt the wilful hatred from certain sectors of the Númenórean population as a personal slight. To even imagine how it would feel to learn, at a young age, that people he had never done anything to thought him an abomination and wanted him dead was a sheer impossibility to him. All he knew is that, if he had been Gimilzagar, he would have begged to cut the throats of those Baalim-worshippers himself. But then again, he was not Gimilzagar, and, -more to the point-, Gimilzagar was not him. Though at least for now, he appeared to be trying.

Repressing a sigh, Pharazôn focused on his son’s expression of genuine interest as the ship’s captain described the passage through the reefs with the precision of a storyteller. He desperately wanted this trip to succeed in awakening Gimilzagar to the realities of his position in the world, and to have him rise to meet the challenge. He had set much store by it, too much perhaps, considering the circumstances that surrounded the endeavour. But it was not just because of Númenor or its perceived future, though this was the only part of it that he had managed to relay to the Prince. Closer to his heart, and therefore harder to put into words, other reasons moved him and informed his actions. He wanted his son to be his, someone who could understand him and whom he could understand, not his mother’s creature, a dark-eyed maddening enigma destined to escape his grasp like she always had. And on an even deeper level, there was something else, which often seemed contradictory with the words that he spoke, and the decisions that he made. He wanted Gimilzagar to be happy, and his whole being rebelled against the possibility that the boy could ever thrive like this. Unnatural powers had not brought his mother happiness: she had been happy despite them, never because of them. While a young Pharazôn had been soldiering and having adventures in the mainland, she had been locked in her rooms, surveyed day and night by old women who treated her as if she was made of glass and could break at any moment. He wanted his son to have the mainland and the soldiers, not the prison in the Palace and the old women.

So you would stretch his feet on a rack to have him fill your shoes, Zimraphel had said once, accusingly. And you think that you are doing it for his sake. Pharazôn had not even bothered to deny this charge, for he was guilty of it, and now more than ever. He would reshape Gimilzagar entirely, no matter the pain or the cost, if only that would free the boy from the gloom that cast its shadow over him. His son might not like the sight of blood and death, the hardships of the army, or being in the public eye, but against an existence full of self-hatred, guilt, and the deep-seated conviction that he should be dead, even he would have to admit which was the better pick of the two.

“I am quite eager to see those reefs”, the Prince was saying now –perhaps a good omen, given the direction of his father’s thoughts. “The way you have described them, they must be a grand sight.”

The captain smiled, and bowed low.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

As the captain had predicted, they arrived on the scheduled day, to a packed harbour where crowds of curious Umbarians fought for a peek of the King and the Prince of Númenor behind the Magistrate, his councilmen, and their respective retinues. Gimilzagar was not disappointed by the reefs, and he stood on the ship’s prow gazing at them in wide-eyed awe, but he was not so interested in the city or the people. Pharazôn could see him clench his teeth and fix his eyes on the points of his feet as they left the ship, received the homage of the dignitaries, and rode past rows of people towards the reception in the Magistrate’s palace.

“Look up and show pride”, the King scolded. “You are the Prince of the West, not an errant child.”

Gimilzagar did look up, but his features had a strained expression which had nothing to do with the scolding. If Pharazôn did not know better, he would have believed his son to be nursing an injury of some sort. Even knowing better, however, he could not allow himself to relent.

“You must learn to overcome this weakness. I do not know what you are perceiving now, if it is their emotions, their thoughts, or their feelings, but they do not matter. They are just insignificant people whose petty likes or dislikes you should not be pondering even for a moment” he continued, wondering if Zimraphel would think him ridiculous for trying to admonish the boy about things he knew nothing about. “Instead of wasting your abilities on them, you would do better keeping them honed for serious threats.”

Gimilzagar nodded, with an expressionless look that gave Pharazôn no indication of what he thought of this advice. Still, he did not lower his eyes again, and he shifted from clenching his teeth to just clenching his fists behind his back.

The feast was splendid and quite excessive, as everything the Merchant Princes ever did. Endless plates of food, jars of wine, and gaggles of musicians and dancers succeeded each other at the vertiginous, punishing rhythm of sheer ostentation. Pharazôn took the challenge head on, eating and drinking heartily and no less ostentatiously, for his years in the mainland had tested and trained his stomach’s endurance in an even harsher way than that of his sword arm. In many of the places where he had been, the reputation of commanders stood less to lose from rejecting the demands of their allies than it did from rejecting their food and their drink.

Meanwhile, between bites and toasts, he made small talk with the Magistrate and his councilmen, in which he tried to involve Gimilzagar as well. He introduced him to everyone, informing them of the project to teach the boy about the world by taking him in a royal campaign. Instead of taking the cue, however, the wretch withdrew from the conversation, pretending to be too busy nibbling at some sweetmeat.  

His first exchange with a guest did not come until much later, when Pharazôn was looking elsewhere. A young councilman mentioned news about some tribe, and Gimilzagar suddenly started asking him rather longwinded questions about their customs, their language, and their appearance. At first, nobody paid this much attention, but as time passed and the boy seemed too engrossed in his relentless search for information to even remember about his surroundings, Pharazôn could see some of the guests move uncomfortably on their seats, pretending not to listen and gazing ahead so they could not be suspected of exchanging disloyal glances with each other. Gimilzagar’s interlocutor, meanwhile, was doing his best to weather the storm, answering the questions as well as he could, though it was obvious that he did not know much about the subject.

“The Prince is quite the scholar, my lord King!” the Magistrate remarked, with a smile that was a little too bright. Pharazôn gave him a withering glance, and the man bowed so low that he almost fell from his seat.

“The Prince is young and he has never been outside Númenor”, he said, and his tone made everyone around them fall silent. “He is curious about everything, and I believe his curiosity should be indulged. Don’t you?”

Gimilzagar, suddenly self-conscious, began mumbling an apology, to which Pharazôn replied with an angry frown. Sometime later, as he decided to retire for the night and motioned his son to follow, the boy could not manage to hide his bewilderment.

“What did I do wrong, Father?” he asked. Pharazôn could see from his demeanour that he was genuinely confused. “I was trying to make conversation, and I thought it was an interesting subject, and that it could be useful for the future if we ever…”

“Apologize”, Pharazôn interrupted him. Gimilzagar’s eyes widened.

“Why? I- I mean, of course, Father, I will, but…”

The King shook his head in exasperation.

“No, you fool, I was answering your question! Apologize is what you did wrong! Will you allow a bunch of merchants to dictate what you should or should not be interested in?”

“But…” Gimilzagar’s bewilderment grew. “But I thought it was you who disapproved. It was you I was apologizing to.”

Pharazôn did not know whether to be angry or laugh. Probably the wine played some small part in his emotions, though he was too used to its effects by now for it to be a valid excuse for anything.

“In that case”, he settled for proclaiming solemnly in the end, “we have to learn to work better as a team. If a captain and his lieutenant do not understand each other, the enemy will profit. Now, I am the captain, and you are the lieutenant. Do you understand?”

Gimilzagar seemed to hesitate for a while, as if pondering whether he should keep talking and risk his displeasure or just give a prudent nod. Pharazôn was almost certain that he would choose the second option, but to his great surprise, he chose the first.

“And who is the enemy?” Perhaps he had also been drinking.

The King sighed.

“Everyone else.”

This time, Gimilzagar did remain silent, though before Pharazôn turned away, he could see his brow crease into a thoughtful frown.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

Gimilzagar had not slept a wink in all night. Back on the ship, he had experienced no trouble finding the path of dreams, but Middle-Earth seemed to disagree with him for some mysterious reason, which he could not only chalk to the intrusive voices of the people who surrounded him, with their sharp contrast between the fawning deference of their expressions and the contempt of their thoughts, or to the fear which permeated everything. Perhaps he had been wrong to believe that he could defeat his own trepidation, the feeling of falling into the deep abyss of the unknown which he had started to experience long before the silhouette of the Island, with Fíriel and Mother, his nurses, his guards, even Lord Abdazer, had faded away in the distance and left him in the sole company of the man whose love demanded the highest price of all. Only the sheer force of a determination he did not know he possessed had been able to carry him through the ceremonies in Sor, knowing that they were nothing but the beginning of a long succession of bloody lessons with which the King would try to turn him into an acceptable ruler for the Númenórean empire. While on the ship, he had managed to keep those terrors at bay by focusing on the impressive sights and the interesting things he was going to see, as if for a moment he still had the ability to forget himself and pretend that he was the son of Eshmounazer the merchant, travelling to the mainland to meet his father’s associates in business. By now, he was starting to hate that young man: he was everything that Gimilzagar would have wanted to be.

You have much to learn about the world, and this could be a good opportunity for you to do so, his mother had said to him, back in the Palace. He had tried to take her words to heart, for he knew that she never spoke idly, or made such affirmations with the sole purpose of providing some vague comfort for his troubles. As it appeared, he had even overdone it a little, causing an incident when he least expected it. But at that point, he had been feeling truly curious, which was why he had allowed himself to be carried away. He knew very little about the Haradrim, Fíriel’s people on her grandfather’s side. When it dawned upon him that the Umbarians saw barbarians every day, and that they must know everything about them, he had felt the impulse to ask all those questions, and his curiosity had only been further piqued when he heard that they were not a single people, like the Númenóreans, but many tribes, each having little to do with the others. Some of them tried to copy the Númenóreans in their organization, living in proper houses, choosing magistrates and councilmen to rule over them and priding themselves of speaking Adûnaic –atrociously, of course- in their daily lives. Those would sell their own mother to acquire precious Umbarian wares and Númenórean style clothes, but then they would wear them all wrong, prompting hilarity and many jokes at their expense from the part of the Umbarian merchants.

Most of their neighbours, on the other hand, were so different from them as night and day. They held to barbaric customs which dated from the Age of Darkness, after the gods had left the world, and before the first Númenórean ship had set anchor in the Western coasts. Those engaged in all kinds of savagery: eating human flesh, drinking blood, abandoning the sick and old in the wilderness as an offering to roaming predators, and giving unwedded maidens off to the Orcs and worshipping their misshapen offspring as if they were gods. But what had amazed Númenórean observers the most was that they did many things in the exact opposite way as them. For example, the merchant explained, they would fight, hunt and conduct business by night and sleep by day, dress as if they were going to a feast when they went to war and like warriors when they went to a feast, serve water to the most honoured leaders and wine to the common folk, and hold it forbidden to have sexual intercourse with anyone outside the closest family. The conclusion had been that some demon must have visited them in the past and convinced them that everything was upside down, and this deceit had proved a long-enduring testimony of his evil wiles.

Once, when Gimilzagar was still a child, one of his tutors had told him that whenever an ancient text spoke of a demon, they meant the Dark Lord Sauron, who had been made prisoner by the King in the Mordor campaign and became the widely respected Lord Zigûr. Shortly afterwards, that tutor had been replaced, and the next one was a stuffy man who did not invite questions, so Gimilzagar had not been able to learn more about Lord Zigûr’s dark past. But this now brought it all back, and he could not help but wonder if the High Priest of Melkor had ever lived among these people as he later lived among the Númenóreans, and if so, what made everyone think that he was more trustworthy now than he had been back then. Of course, that the greatest, most learned, and most refined civilization to exist in the world could be hoodwinked like a miserable bunch of human flesh-eating savages was such a ludicrous idea that he knew that no one with any brains would be able to take it seriously. Even he thought it ridiculous, though then he remembered that Fíriel’s people had come under suspicion for rejecting Lord Zigûr and his teachings. And if they had had their way, you would be too dead to agree with them, his father would probably have snorted if he had dared discuss this subject with him.

In any case, as the Umbarian had told him, it mattered little what those savages did amongst themselves, as long as this did not affect them. It had not been like that in the past, even when Gimilzagar himself was little. The Haradrim were fierce fighters and deadly foes, and though usually they had difficulties joining hands with other tribes, as they hated each other as much as they hated the Númenóreans, their underhanded means of fighting meant that one tribe was often enough to terrorize caravans that ventured outside the Second Wall, delay shipments and wreak havoc on business.  Worse still: whenever an enterprising tribe leader had managed to strike an alliance with others in spite of their worse nature, Númenor had trembled. Ar Pharazôn the Golden had fought two long wars against them, plus many smaller ones back when he was general at the Second Wall. But the most decisive one happened after he became King, and his young son was a year old. The greatest strategist in Númenor had learned from his enemies, and found effective ways to deal with them which no King had previously considered, ushering in twenty years of peace and prosperity in Harad. Only a few outlaws would now and then disturb it, but they found scarce support among the tribes, so their threat never lasted long.

This did not sound as if they would have to worry overmuch as long as they remained in this area. Still, to Gimilzagar’s dismay, next morning his father ordered him to put on his armour before they rode to the Second Wall. It had been devised specifically for him, back in Númenor, as light as a human smith could make it without the magic of the Dwarves or the Elves, but it still felt incredibly heavy. When he wore it, he found it hard to move, even to breathe. Back in the Palace, he had been trained with weights, and though he had insisted several times that carrying a load was not at all the same as having it encase one’s body like a crab’s shell, nobody had seemed particularly interested in his opinion.

“Last night, I was told that the area was completely safe”, he said to his father, carefully modulating his tone so as to not make it sound like a complaint. Ar Pharazôn stared at him in surprise, as if Gimilzagar had just blurted out something in a Haradric dialect. Then, comprehension seemed to dawn, and he took a little too much breath.

“First, you should know by now that there is no such thing as a completely safe area. Second, safety is not the reason why we wear armour.” From the corner of his eye, Gimilzagar gazed at his father’s magnificent set of gold-and-mithril-embedded armour: it could easily weight thrice, even four times as much as his own. “We wear it so the people who wear it every day will not look at us in contempt and wonder why should they obey the orders of someone who cannot even bear the slightest of their discomforts.”

The people he meant were not the merchants or the farmers of Umbar, but the soldiers. They seemed to be all his father cared about, the only ones whose opinion he valued and whom he did not want to disappoint. Back in the Island, he had told Gimilzagar that their efforts kept the Númenórean empire from foundering, and that they could not be simply led to their deaths like prisoners or criminals. But the young man was aware that this was not the full extent of it. He knew that his father liked the soldiers, that while he was in Númenor he often longed to return among them, where he felt at greater ease than in his own Palace of Armenelos. Mother had told him this, and even if she hadn’t, the look in Father’s eyes when he spoke of his mainland campaigns would have been enough.

Gimilzagar, on the other hand, hated the armour, hated handling weapons, and despaired of ever feeling anything different from fear or horror at the sight of blood. That was what made him the wrong choice for a successor, but since he was the only choice, all that was left was the need to pretend. He was determined to do his best, so as they reached the Númenórean garrison of the Second Wall, a true city of soldiers and whores that stretched for miles under the imposing shadow of the great construction that gave it its name, he remained erect on his horse, waving right and left in imitation of the King. And if his smile was strained instead of genuine, at least it managed to remain there while they dismounted and laboriously made their way to the General’s headquarters, stopping a million times so Ar Pharazôn could greet his acquaintances, laugh at their anecdotes and promise them he would hear their complaints. It was truly strange to see his father behave like this, Gimilzagar thought, almost as if he was another person, though a rather more pleasant one.

As for himself, he could feel that the commanders of the garrison were scrutinizing his every move, even as the King introduced him to them. He had to admit that his father was rather clever about it: just as he had done the previous night, he introduced him as his wayward son who was there to learn how to be a man, a way to carefully avoid raising expectations that Gimilzagar could not hope to meet. Unlike the previous night, however, he also had the impression that his father was tacitly giving those men permission to criticise him, something he would not have tolerated of any merchant. If the Prince wanted to earn their approval, he would have to work hard for it.

Their General, Bazerbal, was a rather old man who had apparently refused to retire when the King offered him the possibility. For some reason, Ar Pharazôn had not taken this refusal as treason, but let him remain in his post, and he even joked about bringing all those reinforcements with the true purpose of dragging him back to the Island by force, instead of to fight the enemy. While the man’s attention was briefly set somewhere else, he told Gimilzagar that Bazerbal had once made an oath never to abandon his post to atone for a mistake he had made in the past, and that he was so stubborn that he did not even think the King himself could free him from it. In any event, he added, he was surrounded by enough capable people to keep things running, even if something should happen to him. The very notion that Ar Pharazôn could be so considerate of someone else’s feelings was so mind-boggling that Gimilzagar had great difficulty wrapping his head around it.

While the old man was presenting them his report, he mentioned a spot of trouble with a band of outlaws, who had raided some caravans until they were given up by a tribe they had approached in the hopes of buying food and water with the stolen wares. Gimilzagar had heard about those outlaws during the dinner feast in Umbar, so he listened to the account in some interest. Apparently, they were still at the Second Wall, but would be sent to the temple of Umbar with the first light of the following day. The Prince shivered when he heard this, knowing very well what it meant.

“What kind of men are those outlaws?” he asked, unable to repress a morbid curiosity. General Bazerbal smiled indulgently at his interruption.

“You can see them by yourself, my lord prince.”

They were penned in a large courtyard at the back of the building, visible from the windows in one of the rooms of the man’s quarters. All of them were in chains, unable to move their hands and feet, just like every prisoner that was shipped to Númenor to be sacrificed, lest they thought of cheating the god of his due. Still, what truly shocked Gimilzagar, so much that at first he believed there had to be some mistake, was that they looked nothing at all like the band of fierce warriors he had been led to imagine. There were men among them, but also women, and, to his horror, children. One of them was young enough not to be able to understand most of what was taking place around him, and he was wailing loudly, perhaps calling for his mother.

“But- but these people are…” He was aware that he had gone pale, that he was babbling, and that his father would be displeased with it, but he could not even bring himself to care. “How can they be outlaws? There are women and children there!”

“For the refined folk of Armenelos, the word ‘outlaw’ might bring different ideas to mind, but this is the reality of it”, the old man explained, still with that indulgent tone. “You see, the people of Harad have older alliances and they are treated better than most of the peoples of Middle-Earth. Mostly, they are left to do their own thing, as long as they pay their tribute, fulfil their obligations and do not threaten us. But if someone breaks this rule, they have to be given up before the entire tribe is held responsible and they are all sent to the temple of Umbar. Those who manage to escape become outlaws. They can cause some isolated trouble, but they never get far, as the other tribes are too afraid to help them and share in their fate.”

Gimilzagar turned away from the window, unable to look anymore. His heart was beating very fast, and for a moment it even seemed to him that his sight was growing blurred around the edges.

“But why children? What Númenórean have they threatened?”

Bazerbal’s voice grew harsher now.

“To make sure that it stays that way.”

The Prince was speechless. When he heard his father’s voice, it felt as if it was coming from a great distance.

“This is the only language they understand. Before, they would pretend to honour their alliances with us while behind out backs they would give food and shelter to those who attacked us. They would send their own young men to raid our caravans, and if they were caught, they would claim they had done so against their chief’s orders or without his knowledge. If we demanded hostages, they would send prisoners they had made from an ancestral enemy and claim they were their sons. No one enjoys killing children, but those who remember the days when Harad used to be a beehive know that they would enjoy that even less.”

The feeling of great distance increased, to the point that Gimilzagar felt that the words the King spoke were even in a different language, one that he was unable to understand.

“Gimilzagar, this is not a frequent happening. For the most part, the tribes are at peace now, and this means many children reaching old age when they otherwise wouldn’t. And being abandoned by their own people for outliving their usefulness, I might add.” Ar Pharazôn bit back a curse, obviously growing upset at the young man’s attitude. “Will you stop looking like that? As you can see, Bazerbal, he is too sensitive. No wonder, for he grew up surrounded by old women and coddled by his mother. Last year, he almost got himself assassinated while kissing some common girl who caught shellfish in the bay of Rómenna, which was quite embarrassing.”

“Well, my lord King, I am sure he is just very young…”

Gimilzagar did not care for anything they were saying. All he knew was that he needed to leave, that if he remained there for a moment longer, he would be no longer able to breathe. At the same time, his mouth could not form words, even to beg for formal leave to depart. Unable to find a solution to this conundrum, he simply turned tail and fled, turning a deaf ear to the voices that called for him.

Only after he found himself in the darkness of the corridor, face to face with the astonished looks of the men who were keeping watch there, he managed to feel the air coming into his lungs again.