Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

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The Coming of the Wave

This is technically the final chapter, but the story's status will remain "Unfinished" because I am posting a lengthy epilogue next week.

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Back when she was a child, she had already lived many lives. The first of them, and the most pleasant, was the one where she had a brother, a sweet but earnest man who managed to compromise with all factions and wielded the Sceptre unchallenged–at least until he died without a male heir. In that life, she did not marry, and took up refuge in the North Wing of the Palace, where she leafed through old scrolls, drew paintings of people nobody knew, and dreamed wistfully of many things which had not been. When she was younger, she was filled with great confusion by those remembrances, for her twin had already been dead before she grew conscious of the murderous hands holding them, or the eyes gazing at them with malice from above. They came to her in the dead of the night, when she was treading the fine line between sleep and consciousness, and no matter how hard she tried to recapture them in the morning, it was to no avail.

The other lives were not as uneventful, and they terrified her to no end. She had associated them with people, giving them faces and names that were not hers in her first, clumsy attempts to dissociate the dark world in her mind from the world she could see with her waking eyes. The first was Ar Sakalthôr, the great-grandfather they said she had never met, but whom she knew better than her own father and mother. He, too, had seen many things, lived many lives, and tried in vain to grasp the ever-shifting shapes of the future until he could bear it no longer, and his mind snapped. After it did, he became a sad figure, a King in name only, bearing the contempt of his own son and kin, who could not understand the nature of his suffering. Nobody would understand her, either, and the day she lost her battle she, too, would be a pitiful figure to them, hidden away so she could not bring shame upon her glorious lineage. An old woman in a cage with gilded bars, unkempt and lost, she would be bullied into signing their decrees, and she would weep with rage and submit to their threats like a frightened child.

In her next life, however, the cage did not even have gilded bars, and nobody took the trouble to bully her. She was Alissha, the woman who became known as the Usurper and the Traitor after she lost the war against the cousin who usurped and betrayed her. She also lost the war against hers, the successful and ruthless Golden General of the mainland campaigns, adored by his soldiers and acclaimed by the people. The few who supported her rights to the Sceptre were destroyed, the line of Andúnië failed after nineteen generations, and she died, alone and forgotten, in the same tower where her infamous ancestor had passed away.

But it had been the third life, the one which uncovered a new brand of horror in the unexperienced girl’s mind. After she learned that she could banish Alissha by smiling at her cousin instead of hating him, after she had seen the blood wash away from his hands until only a lovestruck boy remained, ready to do anything for her, her fate grew darker still. She was unable to bear his children, and, one by one, her body expelled them while still half-formed, each taking a little from her. When the last of them came, the only one tenacious enough to hold on to her womb in his desperate wish to live, he dragged her in his downfall. And she became Míriel then, the Elven woman whose name she most hated to hear from her father’s lips, until she could not even bear his presence near her.

It had been a huge feat for the child she had been, to be able to isolate those lives from the terrible confusion that surrounded her day and night. Of course, her efforts had been clumsy and rudimentary, and the older Zimraphel’s more practiced eye was able to distinguish a hundred lives inside the label of Ar Sakalthôr, and even more ways to be Alissha or Míriel. Any word, any action, small as they might seem to the eyes of common mortals, could carve new patterns into the future, and multiply them by another hundred. Even worse, the more she was able to perceive the world around her, the more she grew aware of other people, whose fates were branched and disposed in a similar way, and grew entangled with one another. I can hear the Music of the Ainur, she had solemnly declared to her nurse, the day she told the Princess an old story about the birth of the world.

At one point, she had tried to follow them all, only to see them coalesce around Ar Sakalthôr, the forerunner of her madness. She had almost fallen down the abyss back then, until she came to the realization that she needed an anchor if she wanted to remain herself. She could start with a goal, and what better, truer goal for the mortal she was than self-preservation? There had to be a pattern of key choices she could uncover and disentangle from this mess, just like a seamstress might untangle a single thread from many others, and at the end of it, there would be life and happiness. At the end of it, there would be Ar Zimraphel.

Soon enough, she had identified those choices, this anchor, with a person, whom she had loved with the mad intensity with which a drowning woman would love her saviour. Whenever he held her in his arms, her fate shone bright before her eyes. She would not be Ar Sakalthôr, mad and abandoned, she would not be Alissha, defeated and dispossessed, while he was by her side, and even Míriel was driven away by the knowledge that he alone could conquer life for her and her child and not balk at the price. And yet, in the end, not even he was able to stop the ultimate nightmare where all the threads unravelled: the towering Wave that haunted the dreams of her ancestors. The older she grew, the clearer the realization became that holding to him only made it hurtle faster towards her, roaring with the rage of a thousand storms. For a while, she had played with fire again, searching every single life she had led for the key to change her fate. And that was how she had come upon two major discoveries: one which had killed her father, and another which had saved her.

“That is not possible.” There was a cruel irony in the fact of this man, who had proudly changed his name to Tar Palantir because he thought he saw farther than the rest, proving unable to bear the weight of true knowledge. “I cannot accept it. You are lying, as you have been doing for your whole life.”

“I am not lying. What you call foresight is nothing but a distant echo of the patterns that unfold before you as a result of people’s actions. You have the gift to perceive them, because you are descended from a creature so different from us that by rights all her children should have died screaming. But, like most of our ancestors, you cannot see beyond that. You see a few garbled signs, but you do not see the book. You see a crooked line, but you do not see the drawing. You think you have a privileged insight, but you are merely a blind man trying to grasp shadows with your bare hands.”

His eyes narrowed, but even pride could not cover his deep disarray.

“The dream of the Wave was sent to the line of Andúnië, to warn them of what would happen if Númenor persisted in the path of sin and rejected the teachings of the Valar. That is why I was born. That is why I was made King, and set out to…”

“To nothing!” she cut his tirade. “You knew nothing, and so you succeeded at nothing. The Prince of the South is more powerful than ever, and his popularity is at its peak. People laugh at your Valar, at your Wave, and at your widowed daughter inheriting your Sceptre!”

“And all because of you!” he spat, momentarily forgetting the mûmak in the room as his dormant rage was awakened again in his heart. “You forsook all loyalty, all thoughts of the good of the realm to pursue your mad infatuation. You rejected Elendil, doomed Vorondil and undermined my authority at every turn, with the sole purpose of elevating the object of your incestuous lust!”

Zimraphel wanted to scream in frustration, like she used to do when she was younger, and both her mother and the women who looked after her were as unable to understand her as barbarians who spoke in a different language. But this was even worse, for Tar Palantir could have understood her, if he had been willing to do so. If he had not been terrified of the truth tearing down every single illusion he had clung to throughout his life.

“I saved Elendil, Father! You should be thanking me on bended knee, and all your Faithful with you! If he had married me, there would have been war, and he would have lost it. I saw him die in battle, did you know that? Pharazôn wept in front of others when he saw his body, and swore he would have spared him if he had not fallen, for he was his dearest friend’s only son. But deep inside he was aware of how lucky he had been to avoid that choice.”

“If this was true, and you know everything, you should have helped him, as a loving wife and a loyal daughter. You could have told him what to do, and warned him of what perils to avoid.”

“Oh, yes”, she nodded, her lips curving in a terrible smile. “A blissful outcome, that one! He never even usurped me, or called himself King, which Vorondil would have done while your body was still warm. Until he failed to have children with me, and this led me to rest on an untimely grave, and the line of the lords of Andúnië to be broken forever. Nobody left to have your precious dream, nobody to survive the Wave once it comes for us all.”

“A Wave that, according to you, cannot be avoided.” Tar Palantir’s voice was dull, but he could not hide the strong emotions simmering underneath. “If we cannot change our fate by our actions, if our choices are nothing but illusions and destruction the only outcome, then it would follow that the Creator has forsaken us. And I will never accept that.”

This time, Zimraphel could not prevent herself from laughing.

“The Creator! Do you think He only created the Númenóreans? Do you think there is not a barbarian holding his head in his hands as you do now, refusing to believe that He has forsaken him and doomed his people to an eternity of terror and servitude?” She could see that the blow had struck home: back in his youth, the then-Prince had been as naïve as to think he could change the nature of their rapport with the barbarians. An idealism with had lasted only until he became entangled in his wars for dominion of the mainland with the Merchant Princes. “Do not be too hard on yourself, Father. Since the day the first sailor set foot on Middle-Earth, it was only a matter of time. Such a vast land, so full of resources, and nothing but primitive, short-lived barbarians to prevent us from taking what we wanted! First, it was the timber, then the precious metals and gems, then the very crops that were sown to feed the increasing population of an Island which could no longer feed itself. Glory came next, as ambitious generals sought to advance their career by spreading word of their exploits, and before the end we will come to hunt them, and they will die like cattle upon our altars.” Palantir’s eyes widened in horror. “But no empire lasts forever. Sooner or later, its gaze will grow fixed on an unsurmountable obstacle it will no longer be able to ignore. Sooner or later, this one obstacle preventing them from calling themselves the rulers of the world will come to torment their minds so greatly that they will see themselves as underserving of their glory and wealth unless they can defeat it.”

“Mordor”, Palantir’s lips mouthed the word, almost involuntarily. Zimraphel nodded – now, he was beginning to understand.

“Yes, Mordor. And in Mordor, there is the Dark Lord, who has been waiting for millennia for this eventuality. He has been rehearsing how he will grovel before the man who conquers him, and let him believe he is taking him as a prisoner against his will. And once he sets foot in Númenor, he will begin plotting its ultimate ruin, because he knows that no man who marches on Mordor will be able to resist the knowledge that there are other, even more powerful beings waiting to be defeated on the Western shore, as an ultimate test for his mettle and culmination of his dearest aspirations. And so, in the end, Númenor will be destroyed, its empire will fall, and the world will breathe free of its yoke.” Now, she had come to stand next to the window, where she could catch an unflattering glimpse of some of the excesses taking place after the victory feast. “All the paths converge here, Father. Your precious lords of Andúnië cannot save Númenor, they can only escape it and start a new, less destructive lineage somewhere else. But if this happens, it will be because of me. Remember that!”

It was a testament to his iron will, she had to admit grudgingly, that Tar Palantir did not give overt signs of the devastating effect of her words on the inner core of his being. All that a common mortal’s eye would be able to detect was an unnatural pallor covering his features.

“And why on Earth would you care about the line of Andúnië?”

She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. No more secrets.

“Because I am not as noble and high-minded as you, Father. I only care about those whose fates touch mine, and I care about Elendil’s fate because he will save my son.” She heard him gasp. “You speak of my selfishness as if it was a terrible sin, but I have struggled long and bitterly to attain that state, the only one that could keep me from becoming your grandfather. Once I made my choice as a young girl, and embraced Pharazôn to flee the demons that terrified me the most, I sealed a fate where I would witness the Downfall, and fall victim to it. That fate is inescapable now, as inescapable as the destruction of the Island since Aldarion built his first harbour on the mainland.”

The old King’s gaze narrowed again.

“I do not believe you. There has to be… there needs to be…” He had always been a very articulate man, even in his public speeches before the Court and the Council, but now his careful eloquence was crumbling. “There has to be a way of doing it right.”

Zimraphel laughed bitterly again, feeling his piercing grey eyes try to reach the bottom of the well of her dark gaze. She let him in, deeper than anyone had ever been in her thoughts before. His probing was careful at first; then, it grew more and more erratic, as he was overtaken by wave after wave of disjointed visions he had never learned to sort out. Still, the core of his mind remained strong, and Zimraphel could feel his thoughts focusing on Pharazôn’s death in the Palace, that very night.

An obvious but disappointing choice, Father, she whispered in her mind. To do the right thing by eliminating a man.  Is that not a paradox? I have caused men’s deaths, but all I was striving for was my own happiness.

She felt him flinch at the first images, grow frantic at the next, until despair started seeping through him and all he wanted to do was to pull away and stop looking. For a moment, she was tempted to share his horror, for it was very long since she had allowed herself down this particular path, and there was something about the Island descending into a spiral of civil war which was inherently disturbing, even to her jaded eyes. The Númenóreans were not like the barbarians: for thousands of years, they had known who their King was, and the war between Ar Adunakhôr and Alissha, short as it had been, had been a harrowing experience that spread its insidious roots for many generations. But this was nothing compared to what happened when the main line went extinct, leaving behind powerful families with equal shares of the blood of Indilzar in their veins. First, it started clumsily, for noble Númenóreans had not been taught to be bloodthirsty in the peace of the Island, but after the first years of violence, there was no turning back anymore. It was as if a dam had broken, and suddenly many would-be Kings, their pride and vanity heightened by their immortal blood, pitted the Númenóreans against one another like dogs fighting in the alleys of Armenelos. The sheer impossibility to solve the conflict through any reasonable means –all had the blood of Kings, and of gods, all had noble ancestors and powerful genealogical arguments to support their claims- only made it fiercer, until the winner was not the most deserving, the noblest, or the wisest, but the most treacherous and cruel. And then his own son killed him, took his Sceptre, and set out to conquer Middle-Earth and bring Sauron prisoner to the Island.

When he pulled away, Tar Palantir’s eyes were dull, like those of fish underwater.

“Do you still think I am lying, Father?”

It took him long to be able to even form words.

“Leave”, he said once he could, his hands shaking. His heart, which had survived so many things, from being torn from his mother’s arms to the murder of his newborn son –and, what was even worse than those horrors, the death of love- was breaking upon the realization that it had all been in vain. And instead of blaming him, of laughing at the stupidity of a man who had chosen to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of a grand cause without realizing that he had all of it backwards, Zimraphel found herself weeping for him.

It would have been a mercy to stick a knife in his back instead of telling him, she had thought, that day and also the ones that followed, while she and Pharazôn plotted to take the Sceptre. But that death would have incriminated her, foiling all her plans. To just decide to lay down his life, on the other hand, was a practice well-attested among the leaders of the Faithful, and his own mother remained in the memories of many as a notorious example of this devilry. Even though both she and her erudite ancestors had forgotten the real meaning of this custom, keeping it alive merely because it was an old tradition –or, worse, as a lofty excuse for the most abject surrender.

Zimraphel had told her father that everything was lost from the moment the Númenóreans set foot in Middle-Earth. But the truth was that it had been lost even before that, from the day Indilzar sailed away with his people and sundered them from their fellow Men. From that day on, they had arrogantly fancied themselves closer to the immortal than to the mortal, and banished the memory of all the Mannish customs that ensured the survival of their tribes in a hostile world. Those were the same customs they had found so horrifying later, once they relearned them from the long-forsaken brothers they fought and enslaved. When they found savages who sacrificed their kings after they grew old, and believed that their deaths brought bounty and prosperity to their subjects, they had thought it an ignoble lie spread by the Enemy, and they were so blinded by their pride that they never even noticed the parallel that stood clear before their very eyes.

The very idea of sacrifice, of dues paid to the gods was abhorred by the Elf-friends. It had been erased from their civilization for a long time, until it had returned in full force, under the perverted form of exploitation of a resource they stole from others by the strength of their arms. But the real, the true sacrifice had never been conquered by powerful arms; it was not a commodity, an animal-like chained man who was force-fed while he exchanged hands and profited those who paid for his soul to be cut away from his body. It involved willing victims, proudly offering themselves to the knife or walking into the desert for the good of others, like those long-forgotten chiefs at the dawn of the world, or the founder of Númenor, who sacrificed eternity in exchange for the Island, or the sons and grandsons who followed his example without knowing very well why. And those victims had to be nobler, higher than those who benefitted from their death. They had to be kings among their people, for what was sacrifice but the ultimate act of power? The priests’ legends telling of supernatural forces unleashed by the King of Armenelos after his sacrifice had the right of it, on a fundamental level- even if, as it was the wont of Men, they had conflated it with tatters of old legends whose true import they had forgotten.

Setting her feet on the ground, Ar Zimraphel let go of the reins, and took the bridle off her horse. At once, it started neighing and stomping, prey to a great agitation, and after turning in circles for a while it ran down the path, abandoning her. Animals also had their own form of foresight, she thought, listening to the anguished cries of the flocks of birds that flew past her as she progressed through the footpath. The ground had not shaken since the earthquake that took with it what remained of Armenelos, now a gaping wound in the surface of the earth. She thought of Zigûr, still alive inside his destroyed mortal coil, trying to slither past the rubble and cling to any of the bodies that lay strewn around him, only to realize they were all broken. The child he had created as an instrument to usurp the throne of Númenor was dead too, inside the womb of the woman who had believed in all his lies, but the worst was the knowledge that those he had wanted to destroy were out of his reach. What a pathetic little god. Like a mortal, like her own father, he had grown wilfully blind to the shifting patterns around him, believing he could be the centre of the tale, instead of the mere instrument he was always fated to be. He did not have enough power in him to change the outcome of this battle, or enough nobility to become a sacrifice - and now, he had been reduced to nothing.

Once unhorsed, her progress was slowed down, for her delicate feet were not used to tread upon this uneven ground. The wind, which always ululated harshly during Tar Palantir’s quaint ceremonies, had gone completely still, and the only sound that could be heard up here were the cries of the birds, though it seemed to come from a much greater distance now. It was as if Time had ground to a halt, as if behind the clouds and beneath the Sea, both tinged with the red colour of blood, every god and spirit tasked with moving the world was watching in anticipation.

Zimraphel walked purposefully, past the ascending pathway paralleling the crest. From that vantage point, she could see the land of Númenor, with its fair green fields and rolling hills. It looked so deceptively peaceful in the distance, sitting in the heart of the seas as it had for thousands of years, that the scenes of death, destruction and despair seemed like just one more of those visions that never came to be. In Rómenna, Gimilzagar would be boarding his ship now, unwilling yet spurred by the pleading look in Fíriel’s eyes. All those who huddled on the same deck as him hoped to be given the chance to outrun Death, but he alone knew that Death was inside him, and that he would be carrying it wherever he went.

He had been her greatest challenge, and also her greatest success. For when she was younger, and tried to unravel the patterns of her own life, he always stood like a gaping hole, no less of an unsolvable problem than the Wave itself. A dead baby in her womb, a dead child in her arms, a dead man falling to the floor when his puppet strings were cut, he never stood a chance in a thousand lives. But he had such a fierce wish to live, and held on to his anchor as tight as she to hers, only with an infinitely more poignant innocence, since he did not even know how she could ever save him. This had given Zimraphel hope, and she had studied the patterns surrounding him long and hard, until she finally discovered why she could never avoid the Wave – and the true power of sacrifice.

The path made a turn, taking her away from the edge of the abyss. Before she followed it, she gazed ahead, and realized that, in the horizon, the Sea that surrounded Númenor had started to retreat. Fascinated, she stopped in her tracks for a while, staring at the new, ephemereal landmasses emerging everywhere around her. Only the first Númenóreans had been blessed with the chance of witnessing this spectacle, and now, their accursed last descendants would see it once again before they died.

Time pressed, however, so she shook herself away from her awed contemplation of the last signs to continue in her way. Now, the path headed directly to a hollow basin in the centre of the highest peak of the Meneltarma, the one where she had been dragged, terrified, three times a year when she had been younger. She was no longer terrified, but it also looked more imposing than it did back then, when bored nobles and uncomfortable courtiers stood waiting for her father to finish speaking so they could go back to the feast. There were no nobles and no courtiers now, no ladies, no King trying to revive customs that he did not understand. There was only her, Ar Zimraphel Queen of Númenor, last ruler of the Island and last bearer of the Sceptre of Indilzar, speaking words that she had not found in a book or a dusty scroll, for the ancient Men who said them did not even know what those things were.

“Look upon me, Eru King of Heaven! Look upon me, gods of Men, and see that I am whole and without blemish, leader of my people and mother to my heir. My limbs were vigorous enough to reach you unaided, and my heart noble enough to climb those steps of my free will, without need or coercion. Eru King of Heaven, gods of Men, this is what I wish: grant life and prosperity to my bloodline, and freedom from the darkness. May the lands they hold be bountiful, their lives long, and their children many.” She swallowed, momentarily distracted by the sight of a large, dark shape looming in the distance. At first, it looked like a cloud, but its rumble was thunderous, and its darkness too solid and unbreachable, swallowing every single light in the sky. “If- you agree to my deal, receive my life here and now and bind yourselves to my pledge.”

There was a sliver of foam, glistening like silver in the crest of the towering mass of water that was fast approaching her. Zimraphel watched it, mesmerized, her eyes widening at this vision of unexpected beauty. The Queen of the Seas, the sailors would have said, pointing at it in superstitious awe. They, at least, had never forgotten how beautiful and how deadly she could be. For a while, Zimraphel herself had been her living embodiment in this world, awing the populace who lowered their eyes at her beauty and sang their litanies at her. Fairer than silver, fairer than ivory, fairer than pearls. Now, she would ride the tip of the Wave, close to the brink, for a few seconds before she was plunged into its depths, a fleeting goddess allowed an intoxicating glimpse of the world from above before she came to join her fellow mortals in the vale of shadows. The most fitting of deaths, so perfect that she wanted to weep.

But tears were banned from the mountain ritual, by a prohibition much older than the stone that lay beneath her feet. So instead, Ar Zimraphel opened her arms wide, and smiled as she was swept away.

 

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He had not moved an inch from his position, curling together with Fíriel over the lurching, flimsy wooden planks that separated him and the others from the wrath of the Sea. Still, no matter how hard he tried to remain inconspicuous, he knew that all eyes were fixed on him. Around the time the currents began sucking them into a vortex, and oars and sails had proved useless in their increasingly desperate attempts to escape the death trap, the soldiers and fishermen who crowded the deck had started following him with their glances, and whispering darkly among themselves.

Gimilzagar had good reason to be wary of them. When people felt like helpless puppets at the mercy of an unknown force, when they no longer had any measure of control over their fate, they would go to any lengths to reclaim it. He was the perfect scapegoat, the cursed abomination that Heaven would not suffer to escape the destruction. Without him, they would be safe; with him, they were doomed. If it was not for Lord Isildur, whose protection rose like a defensive wall between them and the murderous impulses of their companions, he knew that he would have been thrown overboard at the very first sign of peril.

Gimilzagar, however, was not sure that he wanted to be protected. He had not wanted to set on this journey, and if it was for him, he would not even be aboard this ship now. He, too, was unable to see how an abomination could live after the evil that allowed him to breathe was overthrown. A quick death seemed easier, and more desirable than a drawn out agony with an inevitable ending, and if those people had asked him to jump into the swirling waters, he would have obliged, whether it was enough to save them or not.

Suddenly, the ship stopped moving. Around them the gale abated, and the air grew eerily still. Gimilzagar stretched his neck to peer across the railing at the line of the coast, and the treacherous rocks against which they had almost been hurled several times already. But this time, looming above the familiar landscape there was another, much darker shape that towered high over Númenor. Gimilzagar recognized it as the monstrous Wave of his dreams, which had swallowed his people, his kingdom, and the very stars in the sky. As its crest of silver foam grew visible to his eyes, he caught a glimpse of a woman’s pale shape: a ghost who floated towards him, powerful and regal despite the destruction that surrounded her.

There is one sacrifice which can end all sacrifices, the Queen had crooned to the sad and angry boy in her lap, in a villa by the seaside long ago. One day, you will understand.

Gimilzagar stood paralyzed, shaking, only distantly aware of Fíriel’s attempts to pull him down. Even as the Sea hung above his head, even as he heard the shouts, the screams of the others, and Fíriel’s knuckles grew white with her painful grip, he no longer perceived the danger, or feared for his fate. For, while all his companions saw their lives escape their grasps, he could feel himself become the master of his, and no storm, no towering waters or promise of destruction could quench the powerful warmth spreading across his chest and trickling into all his limbs.

Yes, Gimilzagar, the ghost spoke. You are free now. Your life no longer belongs to a demon, but to you. I fulfilled my debt, be it late, and gave you what every mother should give her child when they are born.

“Why?”, he whispered, swallowing a sudden surge of shame and anguish. The flare of happiness which had burned in him when he felt the shadow lift from his soul, was swiftly quenched by the unbearable cold of this ultimate realization. “Why did you never tell me?” Fíriel whimpered. “I blamed you for my plight, for keeping my hopes alive with delusions. When you sent me away, I thought you did not want to watch me die!” Tears flowed freely down his cheeks. “You did not even give me the chance to be grateful.”

Ar Zimraphel only smiled.

Do not concern yourself with that, my child. Her voice was a caressing whisper in his ear, as the coast disappeared for ever and the seas grew taller all around them, making every wooden plank in the ship creak and every passenger scream. No matter where you go, my spirit will always be with you.

Gimilzagar lost his balance, and his head was hit against the railing. Before everything went dark, the very last thing he could see was Fíriel clutching a rope, and holding on to him while the roaring waters swept across the deck.