Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

---

Interlude VIII: The One in the Shadows

---

He had been losing himself, as he did so often in those days, because it was a thousand times better than being aware. Second-best, child of ill-omen, hated by your own mother. She had been beautifully painted, wrapped in soft silks, and her perfume was strong and intoxicating. When he buried his head in her breast, she moaned in false discomfort, giggled as his mouth tickled her nipples, called his name over and over.

They were making love in the red flower gallery, empty and safe because the Lady of the Northern Keys was on leave and had taken her retinue with her. So buried was he in the throes of pleasure that he did not hear the noise at first, the scratch of feet on stone, the fallen twigs upon the roof. It was she who had noticed, she who had been alarmed and begged him to stop. Angry at the interruption, he looked up, at the absent lady´s roof, and froze.

It was him.

No longer able to care about his interrupted tryst, he pushed her away and dismissed her for the night. Ignoring her angry looks, her whispered parting reproaches, he crouched by the gallery, hiding behind the red flowers -and waited.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

“My lord Prince. I need to speak to you.”

To this day, he did not know what had possessed him to make that move. Had he hated that much, at that age? Had he already picked sides so clearly, so definitely? He must have had. He must have had, because as his father´s black eyes were fixed upon his in expectation, he remembered the thrill it gave him to hurt these people just as they had hurt him for all his life. This had overwhelmed everything else he could, or should have felt: the weak pangs of his conscience, the feeling of stepping upon a dangerous path, the pure self-righteousness of being his father´s son, and therefore duty-bound to share an information which his father needed to know.

A warm feeling had grown in his chest when Gimilzôr told him that he was grateful for his loyalty. He was not used to such praise, or to being sized up by those eyes as if, for the first time, he had lived up to their expectations. Things will be different from now on, he thought. I am the one who will be trusted.

Still, this did not explain why he would wish to jeopardize this trust by following his father into the forbidden quarters in secret, or lying to that lady and claiming that the Prince had sent for him. Or, once that he was allowed in, why he would hide like a common thief, huddled in a clothing storage closet at the adjoining room from her quarters.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

It began with calm, lowered voices which he could not hear from his hiding place. That part, however, did not last much, and soon enough he could hear his father´s voice raised in a hissing note, such as he had heard only in the rarest of occasions, when the Prince allowed himself to become angry in front of other people.

“You will tell me exactly what my son was doing here yesternight, or I will not hesitate to interrogate him and every single one of your wretched kinsmen to find my answers!”

At first, she begged. She claimed that she did not know what he was talking about, and who could have been the evil slanderer who concocted such a story to disgrace the Prince of the West and herself?

“It was Gimilkhâd”, Gimilzôr said. And then she protested no more.

“I sent him a message” she spoke after a long while, in a painful voice. “I- knew that he was leaving to visit my kinspeople in Andúnië, and that he saw them as enemies of his family. I wanted to tell him.... I wanted to tell him to trust them.”

“So he might commit treason?”

“No! “ He could almost imagine the Princess shaking her head. “No, never that! I merely wanted him to strengthen his ties with them, to learn their ways, though I knew you disapproved...”

“Continue.”

“He... he refused to listen to me. I will go to Andúnië only because the King and my father have ordered me to, he said, but I will have nothing to do with those traitors. A-and then he left.”

“How do I know you are not lying? You have been lying to me since the day you came here!”

“I am not lying!” So pitiful, Gimilkhâd thought. She would look very different now from the regal Princess who stared coldly at him during ceremonies. Frightened, swollen-eyed, crying... her hair disheveled, possibly. He smiled.

“I am telling the truth. I swear to you by all the gods! My sons hate me. Both of them. I have made them hate me, to prevent you from hating them! It was the choice I had to make... the only choice you offered me!”

“Stop blaming me. If you had been a proper wife and a proper mother, and forsaken the ways of your kin in favour of loyalty to the royal family, your family by marriage, none of this would have happened.” Slowly, Gimilzôr´s voice started rising again. “I treated you as my wife, as the mother of my children! And to repay me, you tried to become my enemy and influence them with your lies!” There was a sound of an ivory chair scraping the floor, then something breaking -a vase, maybe? “Listen to me very carefully, Inzilbêth. My son will be back in the Palace in a week to ten days´s time. You are not to see him, to speak to him or to seek him ever again. If I ever find that you looked in his direction, that you spoke a word to him, if anyone sees you and him in the same room when I am not present, I will disinherit him and exile both of you to the farthest outpost in the mainland until you die. Do you understand me?”

The silence was absolute this time.

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes”, she finally replied, in a voice so empty of feeling that Gimilkhâd would have believed it was an Elf spirit speaking. “I have understood you.”

Long after Gimilzôr left the room, Gimilkhâd had still not been able to move. His attempts at a graceful exit were intercepted by a flock of ladies who hurried to the Princess´s side to hold her hand, soothing, complaining and crooning as women used to do, and then once again by their departure when Inzilbêth ordered them to leave her alone. To make things worse, they settled in the adjoining room to the one where he was, whispering among themselves and spouting gossip. If he tried to leave his hiding place now, there was no way they would not see him.

And so, he stayed. He sat in silence, wishing that they would leave, that he could go and find the woman of the strong perfume and hide his face in her breasts, and forget the growing disquiet in his heart.

Later, -he did not even know how much later- he heard a scream. Then, a sound of running feet, of voices, and, then again, more screams. He ran towards the door, pushed it an inch to look at the dark corridor. The screams came from the other room.

He froze.

 

*      *      *      *      *

 

It was said that the Elvish fiends from the Western line could command their souls to leave their bodies whenever they wanted to stop living. Gimilkhâd had never believed these tales until that day, the day when he waded past a dozen wailing women and entered the Princess´s room to find her lying on her bed, her skin white and pale and perfect and with no sign of a wound. Her face was eerily peaceful, too, almost as if she was sleeping. No matter where he looked there were no signs of a struggle, no signs of pain or death.

And yet she was dead.

Belatedly, he realized that he had come in unannounced, and that his father was here. He was kneeling near the bed, and his shoulders heaved as if they were spasming. Gimilkhâd had never seen the Prince Gimilzôr look so little in control of himself, and he realized that his father had not noticed his presence- a split second before Gimilzôr saw him.

The change in his countenance was immediate.

“What are you doing here?”

Confronted by that glance, Gimilkhâd felt an overpowering urge to disappear. To go somewhere, far away, and never come back.

He had not killed her. He had not killed her. She had killed herself. And before that... before that, Inziladûn had killed her.

Everything was Inziladûn´s fault.

“Leave”, Gimilzôr hissed. Gimilkhâd did not need to be told twice: he ran, as fast as he could without completely losing his dignity, from that cursed wing and the dead woman who followed his footsteps screaming for revenge.

“I did not do it! It was Inziladûn´s fault!”

“Yes, my husband. It was Inziladûn´s fault. Sssh.” A soothing voice cut through the bleary haze of his terror, and then cool hands were caressing his forehead, brushing the drops of sweat away. Even before he could remember where he was, he felt the instinctive need to curl against her, to grab her shoulder in his grip and bury his face in her breast. She welcomed him as she always did, quietly bearing the discomfort as if it was nothing of consequence.

“I-it was that nightmare. Again.”

“I know”, Melkyelid whispered. “I know. But you are here with me now, and the Goddess is watching over you. Let go of your fear, of your pain and anger. Let go of it all.”

Her words, slow and paused, worked like a charm, and soon he was feeling relaxed enough to let go of his grip on her. She kissed him.

“You did well. You are strong.”

Only when I am with you, he thought. Only when I am holding you.

As if she had guessed his thoughts, she fixed her glance on his. Her golden forehead gleamed in the lamplight.

“I am with you. Always.”

“I know”. Slowly, reality was coming back to him, and with it the inevitable shame he felt in a corner of his mind when he was forced to rely on her in this way. “Is it daytime already?”

“Soon.” She stood up, and tiptoed towards the window to peek under the red silk curtain. “The sky is red. We could lay down for another while, but in an hour, we will have to be prepared to greet my cousin Magon and the governor´s envoy. They said they would come in the morning.”

“I do not want to lie down anymore.” Gimilkhâd sat on the bed. “Call the servants.”

Melkyelid let go of the curtain, and stepped away from the window with her customary elegance. As she came to stand before him, she touched his cheek with a warm smile.

“As you wish.”