Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

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Severing the Ties

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The boy towered over him, his eyes fixing him with a smug look while he crawled to pick up his training sword, and bit his lip to hide the pain. He was only moderately successful in his endeavour: as his fingers closed over the wooden stick, he could feel a treacherous moisture in his eyes. Angry at himself and embarrassed, he looked down, and pretended that staring hard at the ground was a needed requisite to pull himself to his feet successfully.

“Again”, he ordered, with his best impression of Grandfather’s commanding voice. If that novice priest had hurt him, it was because he had chosen it so. He was in control here, which meant that it was no use snivelling or crying like a little girl.

The boy nodded in silence, advancing towards him a second time. He was expecting his blow now, even hoping to parry it, but when it came, it was no longer from the same angle. How could the damned priest have moved so fast? The sword was long, yet it slid across the air like one of those dancers gyrating in a Court feast. And his other hope, that he would be used to the pain by now, was just as vain as the first, he realized, an instant before he doubled over, mouth open in a silent groan.

“Again”, he repeated, once he was sure that his voice was back. The novice priest’s eyes widened a little. For a moment, he even looked slightly less smug.

“Are you sure? Perhaps we should give it a rest.”

“Oh. Are you afraid?” he taunted. “You do not want me to try again because you know I have figured you out by now, and you do not wish to lose to me, is that it?”

After that, the smugness was definitely gone, but in its place there was anger: a cold, purposeful anger which the boy had only seen in the eyes of adults until now.

“As you wish”, the novice said, with a mock bow. Hearing his voice, the boy knew that it heralded a world of hurt, and yet he could not back down. Because one day, he would defeat him, and wipe that insolent feeling of superiority from his gaze. He would defeat anyone who dared to challenge him, and become the greatest warrior and conqueror the world had ever known.

“The greatest warrior!” The novice priest laughed. “You are just a spoiled little mother’s boy, and I will never be defeated by the likes of you. Oh, you can throw a tantrum, call for your courtiers and your soldiers, tell them to seize me and kill me or do whatever you want with me. But you will never best me.”

“But I have.” Pharazôn pressed the blunt sword tip against the lord of Andúnië’s throat. Amandil’s eyes darkened, betraying a flicker of fear, and he smiled, pressing even harder. “I have bested you. You never were a great warrior, or stronger, or wiser, or better than me. You were nothing but a scared boy who was taken away from his family and pretended to be tough and fearless, and I was stupid enough to fall for it.”

“Oh, so now you speak of pretending?” Amandil filled his own glass to the brim with red wine, then put the jar away, leaving Pharazôn’s glass empty. “You have been pretending for all your life. The Golden Prince! The King of the World! The God of the West! Tell me, would any of those exalted beings lie in their beds tormented by nightmares? Would they be afraid of an assassin’s knife, of old age, of rebels in the mainland learning that you are mortal? Would they have sent away anyone who could drop an unpleasant truth in their presence? And now, would they be allowing their enemy to creep inside their dreams?”

Pharazôn knocked Amandil’s glass down, and realized belatedly that the red liquid spilled across the table was not wine, but blood. A few drops spattered on his cheek, and they burned his skin. He flinched.

“For many years, you have held to the illusion that you could decide who lived and who died. That every man, woman and child in this world was part of your herd of cattle. But the truth is that you are no different from them, and somebody else, somebody whom you cannot see, is standing over your shoulder and awaiting the day marked for your slaughter.”

Pharazôn forced his hands not to tremble.

“I will not die, Amandil.” His voice held the same note of bravado as that of the young child who had struggled to his feet and tried to pretend he was not hurt. All of a sudden, it struck him how ridiculous they both were. “I will make my own fate. And you are no longer a part of it, so be gone!”

This time, the lord of Andúnië’s change was visible to his eyes, in every single, horrible detail. First, his grey hairs grew white, longer and dishevelled, like those of an old beggar lying in the streets of Armenelos. Gradually, more and more hair erupted from his elegant, clean shaven face, hiding its lower half under a long beard that gave him the powerfully alien look of a barbarian from the North. Then, the skin in his face grew papery and started wrinkling, until Pharazôn could no longer recognize the features of the man he had known so well except for the eyes, ancient and remote like those of an Elf.

“You will never have a fate without me” he said, in a raspy, trembling voice that appeared to be struggling to emerge from the cavernous depths of his lungs. His hand was stretched towards Pharazôn, and he could see its decrepit skin crisscrossed by disgusting blue veins. He recoiled instinctively, trying to get that thing off his face. “The day you sail to find it, I shall be waiting for you. And when we meet again, I advise you to take my hand, because, if you do not, no man, demon or god will be able to help you.”

He awoke to find himself imprisoned in a tangle of sheets, unpleasantly warm and drenched in sweat. Feeling his heart beat strong and fast against his chest, he tossed them aside, and sat on his bed. Everything was dark around him, and for a moment he thought it was night, until he was able to distinguish the heavy drapes covering the windows, and a sliver of light projected through the only one which had not been fully drawn. Behind him, he heard a flurry of footsteps.

“My lord King…”

“I told you to keep the windows uncovered.” From his mainland days, he had picked the habit of sleeping under any shade of light, but he could not withstand the disorientation which this artificial darkness wrought on his senses.

Because that is the root and cause of your discomfort, is it? an insidious voice he knew very well whispered in his mind. He tried to silence it.

“I… my lord King, you were sleeping restlessly, and I thought…”

“You thought? Well, the next time you think instead of following my orders, I will hang you from that window as a warning for the next man to fill your post. Is that clear?”

“I am sorry. Please f-forgive me, my lord King” the hapless courtier stammered, kneeling on the floor. The fear which emanated from him was the first anchor Pharazôn could hold on to since he awoke, but he was aware it was a flimsy support. “It will never happen again.” Behind them, others rushed to draw all the curtains, and soon the room was inundated by torrents of light. It was much later than he had imagined, he realized, blinking the tears away from the blinding might of the sun.

“No.” There was a half-empty glass of wine on the nightstand, next to the jar. His hand instinctively moved towards it, but froze in mid-motion after he experienced a vivid flashback of the blood in his dream. “It will not.”

“D- do you need anything, my lord King?” the man ventured once more, after a while of gazing at the tiled patterns of the floor. Pharazôn wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Yes. I need a dispatch to be immediately sent to the governor of Sor, with orders to double the vigilance on every ship to sail in the waters that lie under his jurisdiction. I want all authorized vessels inspected, and all unauthorized vessels seized and their crews detained, regardless of who they are or whether their actions appear suspicious or not.” His aplomb was starting to come back, and when he felt it flow steadily in his voice, he experienced a great relief. “And I also want the same orders to be sent to the governors of Sorontil and Andúnië.”

If anyone was surprised by his words, they did not show it.

“It will be done, my lord King”, the chamberlain bowed. “Anything else?”

“After I am dressed and fed, you will also summon Zigûr from the Temple.”

“Of course, my lord King.” That was a much less unusual requirement. But then, even as they bowed and set out to perform their appointed tasks, none of the men could really know the levels of disarray that Pharazôn was hiding behind his mask of confident authority.

And they must never be allowed to know, the voice spoke in his mind again. Stepping out of the remaining tangle of sheets, he repressed a shiver which had nothing to do with the chill of the morning air in his sweating skin.

The Golden Prince! The King of the World! The God of the West! he heard the echo of its whispered mockery in his ear, its sole inflection reducing each and every one of those grand titles to dust. The hideous, distorted form of the Amandil in his dreams, his body aged and wasting away almost beyond recognition, towered over him like the young priest after he had struck him down.

You cannot avert your fate by seizing all those ships and everybody in them, increasing your sacrifices or building more fleets, you fool, he said. It is too late for that, and you have only one chance left. Again, the ugly hand was extended in his direction, but Pharazôn blinked furiously until it was gone. He sat on the side of the bed, and, as if from a great distance, he saw two men coming at him with piles of clothes.

“One chance is enough” he hissed between his teeth. One of the men stopped slightly in his tracks and blinked; the other had the good sense of pretending that he had not heard. Pharazôn ignored both of them.

“Bring me a towel”, he ordered, wincing as he forced the stiff muscles of his back to straighten up. “And a basin with warm water.”

As you wish, the boy from the Temple replied with a mock bow.

 

*     *     *     *     *     *

 

“Elendil. Elendil.” He could hear the voice calling him, but somehow, his body did not react until it grew closer and sharper. “Elendil! Irimë is here with news.”

Slowly, he pulled himself up and gazed back at Eluzîni’s worried face.

“Good news, or bad news?” he asked, more to affect a semblance of normalcy for her benefit than because he needed an answer. In matters concerning Amandil, there were no longer good or bad news, as far as he was concerned: whether he was caught by the King’s men or not, his father’s fate was sealed. Just as he had chosen it.

“The Governor is still looking for unidentified ships everywhere, but his efforts have not been successful”, Eluzîni informed. “And Irimë says that there has been no news from the Northern and Western outposts either.”

“If Lord Amandil does not sail close to the coast, a small ship like his will be difficult to spot indeed”, Irimë corroborated, with a satisfied nod. Just like everybody else in their household, she had been told that the lord of Andúnië was off on a perilous journey to seek the aid and mercy of the Valar for their people, and whatever else happened, Elendil would never let them know the truth. “May the Valar bless him and guide him in his path.”

Elendil nodded solemnly, swallowing down the knot on his throat. He knew only too well how perceptive the Lady Irimë could be.

“He may well be protected by the Valar, but here in Númenor, it is us who must protect the souls who have been entrusted to our care” he said. “No matter what urgency or peril they may find themselves in, no one must sail in or out of Rómenna until the search abates. So make sure that you impress upon our people that the need to pass entirely unremarked and pretend to be worshippers of Melkor is greater than ever. No one must attract the attention of the Governor, his men, or even the council of Rómenna.”

“I understand”, she nodded dutifully. “I will let them know.”

After she had left, Eluzîni turned towards him just in time to see his composed demeanour leave his features.

“They will not listen, as usual”, he shrugged, shaking his head. “They will keep running into trouble and getting themselves killed. And now, I cannot even help them.”

“Not everybody can be helped”, Eluzîni replied, laying a careful hand on his shoulder. “And not everybody wants to be helped. They want to do what they believe to be right, and no one, no matter how wise or powerful, is entitled to tell them what they should or should not die for.”

He frowned.

“Do not start with this again. Whatever we may have told the rest of the family, my father did not sail away to be a hero. He knew very well that what he was doing was not right, and wherever he goes, he will not have the blessing of any of the Powers.” For a moment, the knot was pressing against his throat again, but it was not grief what made him briefly speechless; it was anger. “Or mine.”

She gazed at him in dismay.

“So you will never forgive him?”

Elendil sighed.

“This has nothing to do with forgiveness, Eluzîni. I would forgive him anything….”

“Are you sure?”

“This is not a matter of me feeling wronged by him. It is a matter of him making a wrong choice for the wrong reasons, and leaving us to suffer the fallout for it!”

To his great surprise, she did not back down at this, but crossed her arms over her chest and pulled herself up to her full -and rather limited- height.

“Well, I think you do feel wronged by him. He abandoned you as a child, and now he has abandoned you again. Whenever the world has grown darkest around you, he has left you alone to deal with it. And every time, he claimed it was for some lofty reason.”

His eyes widened.

“That is most definitely not what…”

“Are you sure it is not?” Her voice was shrill, but only for a moment. “Because if it is, you should not feel ashamed of your feelings, or deny them. If you do, you will never find peace. “Now, it broke just a little, and Elendil belatedly grew aware of what must have been occupying her mind all along. “Take this advice from the bastard daughter of Shemer, the Lord of Brothels. It took me until I received tidings of his last illness, and realized I was not allowed to travel to Hyarnustar to be at his deathbed, to know that there was a problem whose existence I had been denying for all my life. “In a sharp yet elegant move, she wiped her eyes with the back of two ivory fingers. “I will not pretend it has been easy, but you have always been much better at mastering your emotions than I am.”

Elendil tried to still his raging heart, and contemplate her words. Could Eluzîni be right? Did he resent his father, despite believing for his entire life that he did not? Was this resentment the reason why the unfamiliar cloud of irrationality had veiled his mind when Amandil told him about his project, carried on with his preparations despite Elendil’s opposition, and finally sailed away in the night, leaving him with an embrace, a ring, and a bunch of vague platitudes? And, could this also be why he insisted on judging the morality of his actions so harshly, despite being aware, deep inside, of how broken the man had been?

He gazed down, staring at his hands lying over his lap. Without intending to, his eyes fell upon the finger that carried the Ring of Barahir. Even now, he could not get used to it being there, as if it was an alien object unnaturally glued to his skin.

He had never resented his father. Whenever he had seen his mother carry on a torch for her anger, and refuse to let go of the wrongs she had suffered, he had felt great pity for her, but he had not shared in her feelings. He had understood the reasons why things had to happen the way they did, laid the blame squarely where it belonged, and slept all the better for it.

Until now.

If I leave now, you will not see what I may still become, Amandil had said, with the intent expression of someone who desperately needed to drive a point home. You cannot protect me or comfort me. Back then, Elendil had acted as if his father was making a choice, as if it had been his own decision to hold himself up or break down, but he had not been able to consider the alternative: that he had been forced through that path. That he had lived longer, suffered more, perhaps even proved weaker than Elendil, through no fault of his own. That the idea of one last heroic deed before he died could be the only thing keeping him together –but not forever.

Though he did not speak a word, Eluzîni seemed to be aware of the processes going on in his mind. In silence, she stepped closer, grabbed his hand in hers, and squeezed it. Somehow, this simple gesture was able to anchor him away from the dark path of his thoughts, and as he squeezed back, he knew that no matter how far along he wandered through it, she would never let him fall. And then, it dawned upon him that perhaps, the difference between Amandil and him could be reduced to this simple yet crucial fact: that he had Eluzîni, while his father did not. In his life, he had tried to hold on to love and friendship, but both had failed him utterly.

“I love you” she whispered in his ear, cradling him like a mother would her child. “I love you, Elendil, and I will always be with you.”

The next morning, the lord of Andúnië left the house early, to watch the sun rise from the cliffs his father had frequented for years. And as he sat there, staring in silence at the dissipating darkness, he felt more at peace than he had been since the day they had both walked under the shadows of the Temple.

 

*     *     *     *     *     *

 

Amandil sat on the stern of his boat, propping his back on the railing to gaze at the stars. It was long since he had seen so many, since their glow had been so bright and their patterns so clear. In Númenor they were always veiled, either by clouds or by Men’s own pollution, but out here it was as if the world had just sprung, unblemished, from the divine mind of the Creator.

Back when he ordered his crew to turn back and leave him alone, with nothing but a flimsy boat to carry him to his ultimate destination, he had still felt as if he was on the last stage of a suicide mission. A part of him was expecting lightning to strike him, or perhaps the waters to swallow him the moment he was abandoned as a propitiatory sacrifice. The Sea, however, had remained calm, and the skies serene around the lonely shape of the Holy Mountain, which stood above the horizon like a beacon, its white peak reflecting a blinding sunlight at his eyes. When night came, he had slept well for the first time in years, and his dreams had still been vivid in his mind after he woke. Some were dreams he had had when he was much younger, of him sailing on a boat while a powerful storm engulfed the world he left behind, or drifting at the mercy of a current which inexorably carried him towards the unknown. Once he remembered them, he realized that he had not come here in defiance of laws or Powers: he was where they had always expected him to be, doing what they had always expected him to do. He had wanted to be angry at this knowledge, for anger was the only emotion he had still been able to feel in the world of Men, and the one which had kept him alive for the longest time. But then, no matter how he tried to plumb the depths of his soul in search of his old resentment, he could find it no longer. Númenor, with all the pain and human misery it contained, its deaths and sacrifices, and the mainland with its wars of conquest and rebellions, its lesser evils and impossible choices, suddenly appeared like figments of a mad nightmare, which could never have taken place in a world as beautiful, as perfect as this.

And yet it was real. It had happened. It is happening, he had forced himself to repeat, sometimes in his thoughts, sometimes aloud, as if afraid that the memories would slip away from his mind. Perhaps that was the reality behind all the superstitions speaking of fearful defences established by the Valar so no one would be able to lay a foot on their realm: that people who ventured there forgot their purpose and their past, and wandered aimlessly forever, under the power of their enchantments. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine Pharazôn and his men deposing their arms and their will of conquest, and his friend joining him here, both healed from the darkness of their souls. They would sit under this bright sky, no longer remembering they used to be enemies, counting the stars and telling bawdy stories, as they would do around some campfire in Harad. And meanwhile, the world would go on, its wars would be fought, its people would live and they would die, but it would not be any of their concern.

Those wishes, however, were as unreal as they were useless, and Amandil soon realized the danger of letting himself be carried away by them. Now that the frozen grip on his heart had relaxed just enough that he no longer felt he was here merely to challenge the Valar and die, he still recognized there had to be some kind of purpose to his presence. And his personal wellbeing was definitely not this purpose. If there was something he was certain of, it was that no Power would choose him to escape his earthly concerns and be given the gift of healing, not above a million others who had shown greater reverence for them and suffered more than he had. The best he could say about how he had led his life was that he had survived for somewhat longer than expected, getting his hands a little less dirty than expected, but none of that would make a man worthy of special honour. He had saved people, yes, if fewer than what he might have saved if he had been a stronger, cleverer man, and always at the expense of others he had known less, and were not under his responsibility. Perhaps that was why the Valar did not intervene in the world, because everyone was under their responsibility and helping one side would mean destroying the other, he wondered, in a rare instant of sympathy for their plight. But the idea that they could consider Pharazôn worth protecting against the Faithful as much as the other way around was too alien for him to hold on to for long, even in the vicinity of the Blessed Shore. And the idea that, in the end, the death sentence would fall equally upon the heads of all was just as ludicrous, even if, in Yehimelkor’s opinion, there were no innocents in this world.

Still, before he left, he had told Elendil that he would try to get the Valar to hear him out and help his people. Elendil had refused to accept this, perceiving the death wish hidden under this thin veneer of self-sacrificing heroism. But perhaps that could be the true reason why he was here, after all. If the Valar wanted to evaluate if any Númenórean deserved to live, they might want to listen to one of the Faithful plead their case, and he had been their leader for many years. To think that the fate of all his loved ones could hinge upon his actions, however, roused in him the rare panic that he had not thought himself capable of feeling any longer. And with it, Pharazôn’s voice also rose, as mocking and bitter and incongruous in this beautiful place as a worm inside a sweet apple.

Do you really think you can hide from them what you have done? What your people have done? All those alliances and treaties you struck were the weapons of the weak, crafty distractions until you had enough men to sweep in and steal their lands. And now, you are doing the same all over again. You are here on your own, trying to bargain with the Valar simply because you are not strong enough to defeat them. If you think this makes you any better than me, go ahead and try to convince them of it.

Amandil repressed a shiver. He blinked away a sudden fog which had clouded his eyes, but, to his surprise, he realized that it stayed there even after he had wiped them. The fog was in the sky, he realized, veiling some of the stars above him, just as it had happened in Númenor. And then, he was shaken by the sudden, mad notion that it had been him who had marred this perfection; him, who had brought a sliver of ugliness into the vicinity of the Blessed Realm. He had a vision of immortal eyes, older than the foundations of the earth, watching him from atop that mountain and recoiling from his impurity. There was still time to open a chasm in the calm waters he was sailing, and bury such an unsightly creature under the waves before he could soil their land any further.

The chasm, however, did not open, and the sky was not torn. Instead, a gentle breeze made the sails billow and, slowly but inexorably, Amandil’s boat was pushed towards the shores of Aman.