Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

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Turns of Fate

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“Your son committed an intolerable breach of decency and protocol, not to mention wilfully acting against the King’s wishes!” Zakarbal could not keep his voice low when he was excited, or stand still while he spoke. His movements across the room were distracting to the extreme. “He should apologize and leave the capital!”

“He has already apologized! How many more apologies should he offer? It was wrong of him to touch the Princess of the West in an inappropriate way, but he did not even speak a word, remember that!” It had only been one night since the incident, but that brief respite had been enough to bring an unfortunate change to the attitude of Lord Shemer of Hyarnustar. Aghast and embarrassed as he left the Palace with his son the previous evening, today his eyes gleamed with the newfound pride of a great Númenórean lord. “And I do not see why he should leave the capital. He is my heir!”

“You know very well why! The Princess was set to marry someone else.”

“When did that happen? Was there a betrothal ceremony and I was not invited?” No, Shemer would not back down, now. His pride was at stake… and the possibilities were slowly but certainly dawning in his mind, as well. “Or do we somehow not count in your precious alliances, except as secondary actors whenever you have any need of us? My son Hiram, my own son, was given to you in adoption, Lord Zakarbal, back when you had no male heirs and your line was going to die with you! I did it because the Prince Inziladûn, who now is our King Palantir, asked it of me, at the time when the Former King frowned upon anyone who dared to consort with his son’s faction. You should hold me in greater esteem than your own kin! Instead, you wish my other son to disappear in exile because the Princess loves him, and for what? For her to marry someone of the line of Andúnië! What is it that they have that we do not? Lands? Riches?” His indignation seemed to grow with each word he spoke. “They are still rebuilding houses, planting farms and building ships down there, and they cannot even speak for themselves in the Council. They have a liege lord, a priest to make things worse! We, on the other hand, have held our lands and our seat in the Council for thousands of years. We have kept our blood pure. We have produced four Queens of Númenor! Or is it that our ancestors backed Ar-Adunakhôr, Lord Zakarbal? Well, so did yours, and of their own free will, not because their lord was taken hostage!”

“My ancestors were defending their own lands! They were caught in as much a difficult position as yours were, and besides, this is neither here nor there!” Zakarbal’s face was ominously flushed. “You are distracting our attention from the issue concerning us here and now!”

“Which is that my house is suddenly not good enough to marry into the royal line!”

“Father, that is not… I mean, this is…” For a moment, Kamal seemed overwhelmed by what was happening, almost as if he would truly wish to seize the opportunity to flee the capital and have nothing else to do with the affair he had found himself dragged into. Palantir was slowly having the measure of him, and he was not like Elendil at all. It had been his own daughter, he knew, who had orchestrated all this; he had merely followed her lead. 

His daughter. The truth was that she had unnerved him, ever since she developed his mother’s features, and those eyes that he could not read. When the fits started and they became aware of her visions, he had been unable to see her as anything else than an abstraction, a key piece in his long game, to be considered only in the surface, for political moves and alliances. To begin to scratch this surface in order to discover the strong currents of her willpower, her wishes, her feelings and emotions; in short, everything that he should have carefully taken into account before even thinking of making those moves, had scared him in a deep, visceral way, just as it had scared him to discover what Artanis thought.

And there it was. A flaw in the plan. Had his father known what he was doing when he let her live after killing her twin brother? Had he known that sparing her would be an even better move than killing the other baby?

For a moment, it was as if Eärnissë could guess what he was thinking, because she looked at him reproachfully from behind their daughter’s chair. She had had enough, Palantir knew -of him and her brother Zakarbal and the pompousness of Lord Shemer, but of him most of all. She, alone, was aware of his failure, as she had been a daily witness of it.

“If all you high and mighty lords would shut your mouths for an instant, it might even be possible to solve this sad business by asking the Princess of the West what does she actually want.” She had a way of firing the embers of her temper so fast that the same sentence could begin in deceptive calm and end with her chest shaking in anger. “This is not a matter of who has higher revenues, or the larger fleet, or the most heroic ancestor, because she is not marrying your revenues, your ships or your ancestors!”

This put a temporary end to the bickering, as the lords appeared too shocked to reply to her words, but they could not very well ignore them either. Tar-Palantir took a deep breath; his time to speak had come.

Love. According to Artanis, it served as a guide to Eru’s will. Was Eru’s will to drown them all, then? Or did Eru see something in this infatuated, airheaded young man that no mortal could possibly discover?

Surprised at his own irreverent thoughts, the King dislodged them forcefully from his mind. If Eru was to be called into account for each of Men’s sentimental weaknesses, for each of their selfish passions, He would quickly become as irrational as the capricious gods who demanded victims to be sacrificed in their altars of fire.

Artanis was just a bitter woman. A bitter woman he had loved once, but he could no longer afford to be distracted by thoughts of her.

“I love him.”

Míriel’s voice was quiet, but it resonated in the silent obsidian hall like the chime of a silver bell. Palantir had allowed himself to be distracted, after all, and she had taken advantage of it again.

“Did you hear that? Did you hear her?”

“She does not hold the Sceptre yet. She does not rule in the Palace”, Zakarbal retorted peevishly. His sister glared at him, and he countered by turning his glance towards Palantir. Slowly, everyone followed his example, but it was in vain.

The harm was done. The first real battle had come and gone, over his head, and he had not even fought it. He had been caught in an ambush, unprepared, as unprepared as when his father had his baby son killed under his pious, pure, foolish nose.

That time, it had cost him his first heir, the one that was born of his flesh. Now, it had cost him his second, the one he had chosen.

“I had planned a different alliance for my own reasons, and you should not take offense for it, Lord Shemer, because none was intended”, he said. “However, as it appears, my daughter Míriel has decided for herself. The behaviour of both her and Lord Kamal has been inappropriate, and you are right to be angry, Lord Zakarbal. However, the Princess of the West is no mere young woman, and we must learn to respect that. She is the future Ruling Queen of Númenor, and as such it is only fair that she be allowed a choice in who will stand beside her and share in her burdens.”

And if he is not the most suitable for this position, maybe she had wished for it to be so, too.

Tar-Palantir stood from his seat to leave, but before he did so, he sent a last, probing glance into her daughter’s dark eyes. As always, there was nothing there for him to read, no true, raw emotion growing in her features as she smiled thankfully and took her lover’s hand in hers.

He would never underestimate her again.

I am glad that you finally know how this feels, Inziladûn. In his vision, his father laughed, breaching his perfect composure as he never would have done in a lifetime of empty splendour and ceremony. Now you can understand me better, and sympathize with the things I had to do. Can’t you?

“I will never be like you”, he muttered, pressing his palm against his sweating forehead until he forced the vision to fade into the shadows of the corridor. “Never.”

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

He had not been expecting her, that much was obvious. He appeared calm and serene enough, but for someone who knew him as well as she did, there was a slightly wrongfooted air to his expressions, to his silences and his words, as if he had been steeling himself not to reveal his weaknesses, only to realize that all those preparations had suddenly become useless. Even worse for his current plight, he could not disguise how grateful he was, deep inside, that it had been her stepping down that palanquin in the front gate of the Armenelos house of the Western lords, and he felt guilty for it.

Guilty, she thought in a brief surge of anger. Him. How absurd is that?

Halideyid’s mind, already made up to shoulder responsibilities he shouldn’t have been ready for when he was barely out of childhood, had taken an even more difficult turn since his father’s family had showed up to feed him stories of how the Andustar, the Faithful, and the whole of Númenor depended on him. Then, the King had all but ordered him to court his unstable daughter and convince her to love him, without thinking of asking him if he loved her first. He had taken his task seriously, as ever, so much that he had even started to believe the nonsense he kept parroting at every hour of the day. The Princess was a great beauty; she had heard her being compared with the moon, with the stars, and with the Lady of the Seas, all of them remote, terrifying, and out of reach for mortals. When that highest and fairest of ladies decided to amuse herself by playing with his affections, perhaps trying to revenge herself on her father for his stupid ploys, the seducer had become the seduced as fast as a pin could drop. He had never stood a chance, young and naïve as he was. Oh, he seemed very mature, wise beyond his years, but at heart, he was a little boy whose ungainly height made him the laughing stock of all the girls in his neighbourhood. If only he wasn’t so adept at hiding his weaknesses and appearing untouched by all of life’s hardships! Even the most prized race horse could only take so much before it fell to its knees, useless and foaming at the mouth.

“I am glad to see you, Mother, but I must confess I was surprised. I had heard of the news of Father’s accession, and I thought...”

“You figured that they needed me for their Elvish ring-exchanging ceremonies”, she finished for him, picking a handful of dates from a tray and sinking her teeth into the largest one.

“Well…yes.”

“The ceremony has only two obligatory participants, the old Lord of Andúnië and the new Lord of Andúnië, and I am neither. I am sure that some former Lord of Andúnië must have had a wife, but it was so long ago that they have probably forgotten where she was supposed to stand for the duration. “She munched her second date, thoughtfully. “I wonder why no one considered marrying between a hundred and fifty and two hundred years old. Living a married life until old age is surely more fulfilling than remaining faithful when your blood runs hot. Or maybe they could all marry twice in life, and start an honoured tradition of double marriage. An Elven king did it once, and the only condition was that the first wife could never return to the world of the living. I believe that this rule applies to all of us, doesn’t it?”

“Mother!” She had achieved her first purpose: to scandalize him into dropping his guard. “That is a terrible thing to say. Besides, by the grace of the King, now we can marry into the line of Elros again.”

“And live hundreds of years of a loveless marriage?”. Amalket picked another date, and soaked it into her cup of spiced wine. A single drop fell on her lap, staining her blue dress, and she experienced a brief moment of uncertainty before she remembered that it did not matter anymore, that she could have another identical dress made by tomorrow. As always, this realization did not bring relief, but rather a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. It was like when she read the tales of the Elves in the ancient Quenya scrolls, and grew exasperated by how it could all be so grand and so meaningless at the same time. A dead wife could choose to go back to her husband or stay dead. An entire people could choose to go to war because they had grown bored with their immortal life of bliss, but when they were killed, they were eventually healed and came back to life to start anew, so nothing ever mattered. The only tale that moved her was that of the Elf maiden who chose mortality for the love of a Man, because only there she had found a sense of true finality.

That had been real, both their death and their love. Until, ironically enough, she mixed her immortal blood with that of Men, and their children became long-lived freaks who could only marry each other.

“She was not the woman you were meant to marry”, she said, deciding to do away with the pretence. “The King had a daughter as only heir, and he needed someone of the bloodline of Elros who could rule in her place. He also wanted to return the Lords of Andúnië to their position of former pre-eminence so he could rely on them as his strongest allies. Your father was not available because he already had a child by me, so it had to be you. Nobody cared that she was older than you and in love with someone else. So stop feeling guilty because you failed to fulfil your impossible mission!”

Halideyid looked down. At once, the anger she had mustered against the people who had dared use her son abated in the face of his obvious distress. She sighed, embarrassed at her outburst.

“Did you love her?”

He did not answer for a while, then nodded quietly, as if afraid of the sound of his own voice.

Amalket stood from her seat so she could lay a hand on his shoulder. For a while, the garden lay in silence, broken only by the rustle of the fountain and the distant sound of birdsong.

“She was so beautiful” he finally spoke, she did not know how long afterwards. “At first, she didn’t seem to like me much, but then her behaviour began to change, and I thought…I thought…”

“You thought that she loved you, too”, she finished for him. To think that her father’s job had been to protect the Palace walls for all his life, and now his daughter, who could enter them at will, was contemplating murder.

But murder was not a constructive solution, and she could do better.

“Halideyid”, she began. At first, he had tried to have her call him by his new name, but it had been some years now since he had desisted. “Let me help you. If you truly love her, if this is how you feel, now is the moment to act. I will accompany you to the Palace, and once there, you must convince her to see you.”

“What? See her… after this?”

“Yes.” She felt herself getting carried away by her own words. “See her, and tell her of your feelings. Let her know that, in spite of what she has done, you still love her, and will never love another. Fall on your knees, and beg her to take you back.”

Halideyid shook his head, incredulously.

“Stop, Mother! You have no idea. She already knows all of this.” His face was quickly becoming red. “I will not embarrass myself for their further amusement.”

“And I am glad to hear that.” She fell back on her seat, and sought his eyes with her glance. “Halideyid, listen to me. You are feeling pain now, so much pain and embarrassment as you had never felt before. It seems like you will never recover from it, but do you know what? You will.” Her gaze became so intent that, for a moment, she felt like her very eye-sockets were burning. “This is not the love that consumes your soul. If it was, you would never give up on her, and if she married another man, you would not love another.”

Halideyid looked as shocked at this as if she had gone and sprouted horns. While Amalket leaned back to scrutinize his reactions, his brow furrowed in hard thought, as if searching for an appropriate retort that could convince her of the wrongness of her assessment. He had never been one to engage in pointless discussion, but when he had made his mind about something, he stuck to his truth until the bitter end. And yet, here, there was no rational argument to be made, and the very fact that he tried told her everything that she needed to know.

In the end, he gave up.

“How can you speak so surely of things you do not know, Mother?”

Because I had my soul consumed once, my son. Because I could not love another and turn away from disaster.

“I… just trust me, Halideyid. Trust me on this one thing.” She paused, wondering for a moment if she should go on, but consumed or not, he was hurting. He deserved her honesty.  “If I… if things had been different, I would be living in the countryside with my family, or somewhere in a nice cottage in the seaside with a good husband and your little half-brothers and sisters. I would probably have grandchildren by now, and I would be teaching them how to weave. I always loved weaving patterns.” Her gaze hardened for a moment. “But I did not, and here I am. You, however, should not waste your time grieving for that woman, my son. As high and beautiful as she might be, she will fade from your mind soon, and I will be glad for you.”

Halideyid considered her words. She did not remember how long it was since he had paid such undivided attention to anything she had said. For a moment, he reminded her of the child he had been once, so strong and, at the same time, so lost.

“And what if she doesn’t fade? What if she is the one person I was fated to love, like Father was for you?”

“Someday you will truly know love, and when you do, you will realize that this was nothing but a mistake.” She forced herself to smile. “And if there is a single god who is fair in this world, they need to compensate you for living all your life under the shadow of what so many selfish people chose to do with theirs.”

“Don’t we all need that?” Halideyid snorted in bitterness. “Mother, I am sure that the Almighty Creator, beyond the Circles of the World, has higher designs in His mind than making sure that I have balance in my life.”

And that is why he is such a failure as a god, Amalket thought, wondering how long would Tar-Palantir be able to keep his people satisfied with his extravagant charade. To Halideyid, however, she gave her warmest smile.

“You may be surprised yet”, she whispered, gently stroking his hair and elevating a silent prayer to the Lady to guide him towards happiness. “One day.”

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

The ceremony was ready. In the solitude of the armoury, vacated by the night watch on his own orders, the items had been carefully set on a red piece of cloth upon the floor. Blue flames, kindled from the sacred embers of the chapel, crackled inside a golden basin, spreading the scent of smoke throughout the enclosure. A small pot contained a measure and a half of incense, and a jar had been filled to the brim with drops of sacrificial blood. Next to them, at the end of the row, lay the most important thing of all: a glass tray holding six fresh leaves of the sacred herb.

His hands clenched on the cup he was holding, which exuded a powerful smell from the dregs of undiluted wine. For a moment, he lowered his gaze to study them with a critical eye. No, not trembling anymore. Three cups had been needed to steady them, to avoid shaming himself by looking afraid before the Lord of Battles. A small voice in his head whispered insidiously that his external appearance did not matter, that the god would see the cold abyss inside, the one that a hundred and a thousand cups of the strongest red would be unable to fill. But he had never refused a battle simply because the odds were not in his favour.

He had to do it. Or else pass away, unseen, unnoticed, discarded like an armour that had accumulated too much rust. Rise or sink in the shadows.

“King of the City, Lord of Visions, send me an answer.”

The incense was the first thing to be thrown into the flames, and the scent quickly spread across the closed space, preparing it for the imminent arrival of the Great God. The blood followed, causing dark sparks to sizzle and crackle before they vanished. His right hand flew towards the glass tray, and for a moment of brief hesitation it hovered in the air above the first of the leaves.

“King of the City, Lord of Visions.” His voice seemed to belong to a stranger. Was it his febrile imagination, or perhaps the magic was already working? “Send me an answer.”

The leaf lay in the flames for a long time before it was consumed. It was one of its sacred properties, to remain green after it was cut, and to resist fire and frost as if under the protection of the Lord. But this fire was sacred as well, and eventually the prized fumes of the divinity were released from the basin.

Why did he still hesitate? Was he afraid of success, or of failure? Back when he was much younger, he had gone through all those motions in the Palace of Armenelos, under the watchful sight of his grandfather and his father, and he had failed. Back then, only his mother had been able to mitigate his shame, telling him that his power lay elsewhere and that he should never doubt it. But she had been wrong, and her own predictions nothing but the magic tricks of a charlatan; worse still, a charlatan who had even tricked herself into believing her own false prophecies.

Years later, when he first set foot on Middle Earth, he had made up his mind to try again. He had believed himself to be older and more experienced, and the vastness of the Sea lay between him and the eyes who followed his every move in anxiety and disappointment. But Hannishtart -Amandil- had seen the leaves fall from his armour when they were lost in Haradric territory, and figured out what he planned to do. He had succeeded in convincing him that visions were not good for a ruler, that they were a weakness and a distraction whenever swift action was needed. After all, what need did he have of visions, if others could have them for him? Even back then, she had been the one who saved his life with her prophecy, when she gave him the sea-green stone that saved him from the Orc ambush.

But that was before she turned on him.

“King of the City, Lord of Visions, send me an answer.”

Resolute, as he felt whenever he charged the enemy lines, he plunged his face into the fumes, and forced his nostrils open. The onslaught of pain and asphyxia was so sudden that his body tried to reel back, but he held the basin with both hands and stood his ground. His limbs shook in irregular spasms, he couldn’t… he couldn’t…

His surroundings dissolved, and the ground opened up under his knees, causing him to fall into a black, endless chasm. He heard a roar in his ears, and knew it was the sound of air as he hurtled down towards the end of the fall and his inevitable death. His heart felt about to burst.

“At last.” Tar-Palantir said, smiling. “We are rid of him through his own foolishness, and now he is dead through no sin of our own. Blessed be the Almighty Creator.”

“He was always a disappointment.” Gimilkhâd turned up his nose in disgust. “He gave himself such mighty airs, and then he didn’t even try to fight for what was his.”

“Why did you do this?” Melkyelid wept. “You always misunderstood everything I told you. I tried to tell you what you had to do, but you did not pay attention.”

“I cannot understand why anyone would want to have visions.” Hannishtart’s eyes were sad. “If you could see the future, we would never have been friends.”

“Coward.” Zimraphel’s black eyes opened before him, wider and wider, and he could see that this was it, the bottom of the chasm where he was going to crash and die, torn to pieces. He tried to hold onto something, anything, but the edges of the basin had slipped from his grasp.

There was no escape.

“I loved you.”

“Commander! Commander!”

The voice came from a great distance at first, then gradually grew closer and closer, until it was right beside him. With renewed hope, he tried to grab it, but he could not grab a voice, and he was still falling.

“Commander, here!” Suddenly, he felt an impact, something cool against the heat of his face. If there is an impact, there is something solid, the thought appeared in his mind, though he did not know who had put it there, fully formed. He latched onto it, holding to a bony hand until he could feel the ground beneath him again.

“There, there. Oh, fuck! Calm down!” a heavily accented female voice shouted. Pharazôn’s eyes opened wide, but all he could see was darkness. He panicked.

“I cannot… I cannot see”. Was that his voice?

“Of course you can’t see, you knocked the lamp down. Stay still!” A second impact hit his face, this time a cold liquid that acted like a wake up call. Jolted, he began slowly to regain his bearings. He was lying on the floor, dripping wet, his forehead burning. Somebody was moving next to him.

He did not know for how long he lay there, still, until he grew sure enough of himself to utter words again.

“Merimne?” he whispered. Yes, it was his voice. The air was still heavy with smoke and the scent of the burning leaf.

“Yes. I am going to light the lamp.” Deliberately slowly, as if he was a beast out of its cage and she had to prevent him from leaping at her, she moved away. Then, a source of brightness hurt his eyes and forced him to close them again. Blinking back tears, he forced himself to become accustomed to the glow, and barely managed to bite back a cry of surprise.

The basin had been hurled back so strongly that it had crashed against the wall of the tent and ricocheted against a box full of knives. Everything it had contained: the sacred embers, the incense, and the half-burned leaf, lay unceremoniously on the ground, in a puddle of water. The red cloth had been kicked away, and shards lay everywhere, probably from the glass tray where the leaves used to be. Dazedly, he realized also that he lay a large distance away from the spot where he had originally knelt for the ritual.

“I am sorry about your fire. I know it is sacred for you, but I had to put it out.” The woman knelt next to him, and looked down into his eyes. “You were having a fit from that accursed leaf such as none I’ve ever seen. If I hadn’t been passing through and wondered why there was no one standing guard on the armoury…”

“I see”. Cautiously, he propped his arms behind his back and raised it until they were both at the same level. Her gaze had the opaque quality common to all the barbarians of Harad, but he thought he could detect a slight hint of disdain. He winced; his reputation probably stood to take a severe hit from this. What had he been thinking?

“Does anyone else know about this?” he asked. She shook his head, and he relaxed just a little.

“Let’s keep it that way, then.”

“I did not know that you were a Númenórean priest.”

That was definitely sarcasm, Pharazôn noted, though voiced in the expressionless tone that the barbarians seemed to have perfected with the only aim of mocking Númenóreans without those being able to prove it. She was particularly good at that, something which had not helped her make many friends in Umbar -or rather, he thought, unmake the enemies that she already had. A few years ago, while he was still in the Middle Havens, she had been caught alive in a skirmish and taken to camp, where somehow she managed to make a Númenórean soldier bleed to death by using only her teeth. She had been about to lose her life then, but in a surprising turn of fate, the intelligence of the camp identified her as a well-known Haradric leader who had inflicted one too many embarrassing defeats on Númenórean parties beyond the border, and whose head was worth a great price. After that, they had no choice but to keep her alive until he returned, and Pharazôn always offered worthy enemies the possibility of joining his army. This had made him widely respected by the Haradrim, whose capacity for diplomacy was so limited that they could imagine no greater bravery that a man who surrounded himself with his enemies. When asked, she accepted his offer, on the condition that no Númenórean would dare touch her again, but Pharazôn was not sure this was necessary, as there were many whores in the Second Wall who didn’t bite men to death.

“I am not a priest”, he said, ignoring her jibe. “My family, however, has a gift from the gods, to see visions of the future like priests do.”

“But you are a warrior.” Now, she seemed genuinely surprised. Little by little, trying not to make a false move and be further humiliated in her presence, Pharazôn struggled to his feet, and sought for the water basin that she had poured over the flames and over his head. As he should have expected, it was empty. He bit back a curse.

“So, what?”

“So, warriors cannot have visions. If a warrior has visions, he is not reliable in the battlefield. He will have to give up arms and enter priesthood”, she explained, as if it was the most logical thing in the world and he was an idiot for not understanding.

“Among your people, maybe”, he muttered, in a defensive tone. He remembered Hannishtart’s words, long ago, in this very place. The visions do not help you to rule. They do not show you what to do, they are confusing and insane.

“And did you? Have visions?”

“That is none of your concern”, he said, quellingly. His previous desperation was beginning to seep back into his soul, if in a more scattered, less purposeful way. No, he did not have visions. He only saw his fears standing before him, having the best of him as in the most ordinary of nightmares. Worse, he had reacted badly to the leaves, a fit like none I’ve ever seen, as she had put it, and if she had not been there or had not known how to react, he might be dead. Dead by smoke inhalation in a tent, a heroic fate for the Golden Prince of Númenor.

But what kind of hero was he, anyway? He had not fought for his birthright, he had abandoned his father and mother, and then he had abandoned her. And she had abandoned him.

“Yes, I am a warrior”, he said, before he even noticed that he was speaking the words aloud. “For a backwater barbarian that may be a glorious thing, but, to me, it means nothing. I am a hero in a corner of the world, but in the Island beyond the Sea, nobody cares. There, only absurd traditions and ceremonies matter. I cannot fight my way to the throne of my people, and I cannot fight for the hand of the woman I love.”

She stared at him.

“She was the one who had the visions. My… priestess”, he explained. “We were lovers, but the law of my people forbade us to marry. She was set to marry another by the King, her father, and become Queen after him. She asked me to break the law, but I could not do it. It is folly to fight the King of Númenor, I was not powerful enough to do it, and the man she was supposed to marry was someone I had sworn an oath to protect, so I could not harm him without invoking the wrath of Heaven.” Why was he telling her this, of all people? “So I left, and she took her revenge by marrying another man out of love.”

“And that is why you are trying to become your own priest”. She seemed to have caught the gist of it. “To prove that you do not need her.”

Coward. You will stay in the mainland hiding behind your insignificant duties among your insignificant men.

He clenched his fists. He felt like breaking things, like losing his composure and yelling. But, if he surrendered to that impulse, he would lose the respect he had gained among his army and the barbarians, and they, insignificant or not, were all that remained to him now.

“You need to fight”, she observed, as if making a diagnosis. He wanted to hit her.

“Are you volunteering?” he snorted. Merimne nodded, obviously pleased that he had caught her meaning so soon. “Forget it. I cannot hold back at this moment.”

Now, he had managed to anger her, too. He felt a brief, pointless jolt of satisfaction.

“When has any Númenórean ever held back when fighting me?” she growled. He shrugged, and began searching for suitable weapons under the light of the lamp. There were practice swords somewhere, he had seen them before.

While he looked for them, she slipped away from the tent. As he finally found them and followed after her, she saw her standing still on a nearby clearing, her angular features looking as if cast on a mould under the faint glow of the moon.

“Here”, he said, throwing her one of the swords. She caught it in her hand, and began cutting the air with it in large swipes, until she was satisfied with the balance.

She was agile and lean; with both her breasts strongly tied to her chest with the traditional thin bandages worn by the women of the land, her build was similar to that of a teenage boy. The spark in her eyes was ferocious, and she prowled like a cat, and for a moment, there was no trace of the ally in her countenance.

That suited him now just fine.

Swords clashed in a furious dance, which brought back a much needed clarity to his senses. There was no smoke now, no visions, no agonising doubt. Hannishtart had known it, he had always understood much better than Pharazôn did that fighting for one’s life was the only thing that could help a man escape the role of puppet of gods and men. Back when Pharazôn had fought for glory, he had fought to lose himself in the violence, to forget who he was, and what others had done to him.

With a yell of triumph, he parried her thrust before her arm could reach the right angle. Wrongfooted, she tried to retreat, but as soon as she disengaged her weapon, he kicked her to the ground. Lying there, she still managed to parry his blows, but she could no longer stand up, and it was not long since he beat the hilt out of her finger. She grunted in pain, trying to roll away from the onslaught, but he pinned her to the ground, and quickly inserted the hilt of his sword between her teeth before she could bite him. Her grunt became a low growl, but she could not move him from atop her; he was too strong. Her black eyes narrowed, and for a moment she was not Merimne anymore, but Zimraphel, mocking him.

Coward. Coward. Coward.

“I am not,” he hissed. “I am not.”

Before he could move, however, he felt something hard and cold pressing against his aching hardness. The black eyes glinted, and he immediately loosened his grip on the sword she was biting, which slipped and fell with a dull thump.

“Break the agreement, and I will be free to do this”, she whispered, her voice still hoarse from her growling, but deadly calm. Slowly, he moved away from her, and fell back to sit on his knees. For a long while, all that could be heard was the heaving of their chests as they both gasped for air.

She was the first to break it.

“You should go back to the Island and try that with the lady.”

He snorted.

“Good advice from a barbarian.”

“I think she would want it.”

“I see that you want me dead. I suppose I deserved it.”

“I mean it.” She stood up, cradling her hand gingerly where he had knocked the sword away and caused a bruise. “She was going to be married to someone you could not kill, wasn’t she? And then she broke that deal and married someone that you could kill. If it was me, I would be expecting your return.”

Pharazôn stared pensively at his discarded sword, which reflected the light of the moon. Then, he shook his head.

“That is ludicrous. You know nothing about Númenor, and all you have ever seen of its people is soldiers at war. You would never understand how things work there.”

Her snort was more contemptuous than his words could ever be.

“But you are not so different from us, are you?”

He did not grace this with a reply. His head was beginning to ache now, with a dull but slowly growing pain, probably because of his experiment with the accursed leaf.

“Can you walk?”

“Of course.”

“Then you are dismissed.”

For some reason, she smiled. As she struggled to her feet, however, the smile turned into a wince that she bit back out of pride.

“I will be at my tent, then. You can find me tomorrow for the reward. For saving your life, remember?” she added when he saw his blank expression. Then, she picked up the sword and walked away, laughing aloud. Pharazôn, thrown back into the raging sea of his thoughts, paid no more heed to her.

You are not so different from us. Yes, Númenóreans in Middle-Earth conquered through violence. They killed, enslaved and raped, while the Númenóreans in the Island lived their quiet and content lives, enjoying the wealth acquired through those means that they mostly professed to ignore. In the last years, the King had even forbidden triumphal processions and public executions of vanquished enemies, complaining about the violence of the display. It was as if the Second Wall, the Middle Havens, the Mordor frontier, had suddenly become a parallel, invisible world, like a kind of shadow cast by the blessed light of Númenor. And yet the wars still went on, and on, led by men who were no less Númenórean, no less civilized, no less born of the blood of the mighty Sea Lords.

Was civilization, high blood, a mere pretence, to be dropped at will? If this was so, he thought, then it was not madness to think that Zimraphel could wish him to kill her husband, take her by force and usurp her throne. If this was so, too, it was not insane to believe that he could get away with it, that others could follow him in spite of laws and traditions. That the gods would favour the strongest man, as they had when Ar Adunakhôr the Great had seized the Sceptre by the strength of arms.

If. If. Too many ifs.

That night, Pharazôn’s headache did not let him sleep.