Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

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The Arnian War III

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Pharazôn awoke in a bed, under the roof of a tent that did not look like his. For a moment, he wondered if he could have fallen prisoner, but they would have tied him up if that was the case. As he checked his limbs to make sure of this, he discovered that they hurt as much as if he had been hanging from a cliffside. His fingers were cold…

…cold…

The sensation brought back a flood of remembrances, and he repressed a shiver, reviving his fight against the fell creature of Sauron, the terrible cold, and the feeling of dread that its ominous words had evoked in him.

“You are awake, my lord prince!”

It was not the voice of the healer, but that of the priest. Apparently, they had done what he told them, though he could not even remember if he had spoken in dreams or if he had been awake.

He struggled into an upward position, propping his elbows against the mattress until he could raise at least one half of his body. The priest of Melkor was approaching him, holding a steaming bowl which exuded a familiar scent. Staring around him, Pharazôn realized that this scent was not only coming from the bowl: it was all around him, as it came from the sacred leaves which had been carefully laid over his chest, arms and legs. With his earlier movement, he had dislodged a few of them, and noticing this, he fumbled to pick them up from the sheets.

“This is a miracle! The god’s miracle!” the holy man exclaimed joyously. “You were at the brink of death, but the King of Armenelos saved you! He brought you back from the Everlasting Darkness!”

After the visions he had seen, Pharazôn could not help feeling chilled by those words.

“I am sure…” His lips were parched, and the words that came through them seemed to come from somewhere underground. “I am sure it was not so bad.”

Trying to ride the residual pain in his hands, he grabbed the bowl as best as he could, and marvelled at the heat in his fingertips. Carefully, he inhaled the smoke, and the ache and the cold seemed to fade away, together with his remaining confusion.

“What happened? Have we… won?”

“The enemy was routed, blessed be the Lord of Armenelos”, the priest of Melkor confirmed. “Noxaris was overrun by the Haradrim, and you defeated the commander of the troops of Mordor. The survivors fled after that.”

“How many survivors? Is Noxaris alive? How long have I been here?”

“I heard that his body had been retrieved from under his horse. The survivors are few compared with the numbers of those who faced us, my lord prince. And you have been here for a day and its night.”

“I have to go.” Confident in his newfound mobility, and aghast for having missed the most decisive moments after the battle, Pharazôn let go of the bowl, and tried to stand on his feet. The consequences were similar to all the times he had tried to stand after getting drunk: the world turned around him, and his body lurched forwards. Quickly, the priest ran to offer him his shoulder before he could fall.

“I can do it on my own” he hissed, struggling to find his balance. The leaves were falling to the floor one by one, but he could do nothing to prevent it.

“Of course, my lord prince.”

“And I do not need you to humour me.”

This time, the priest had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, though he remained firmly beside him as Pharazôn walked the first tentative steps towards the exit, in case he was needed again. The prince still resented this a little, but he did not complain. The sacred fire was crackling in the altar, and as his gaze fell upon it, he muttered a heartfelt prayer. It was the Lord of Battles he had prayed to, when he had been about to lose his life, and it seemed that the god had not withdrawn his favour in his moment of direst need.

When he came to the tent flap, he was beginning to feel steady enough as to stretch his arms and open it himself. Outside, the morning sun shone so brightly that he was forced to close his eyes, blinded by its intensity. A cold intensity, he thought, wondering why it was so difficult to feel warmth since he had been in that creature’s presence.

“My lord.”

Someone was before him, and he needed to blink several times before he could recognize Adherbal. Next to him, there were others, and as he looked around, he counted not two, or three, or even four, but at least forty- no, sixty men at least, and that was only on the first row. Behind them, other faces lined up for his scrutiny, so many that he finally gave up on trying to count them. They had all been there, standing around the tent while he slept.

“As you can see, I am alive!” he shouted, holding up his arms. A clamour arose at those words, a wordless roar of mismatched shouts and voices, which gradually came together in a chant.

“The King has come!”

“Hail the King!”

“He came back from the Darkness in triumph!”

“Hail the King!”

“Now he treads upon the living world, where he will dwell until the end of time!”

He reeled back, in shock. That was the litany of the King of Armenelos, the one they sang every year in the festival commemorating his resurrection. But it was also what they sung whenever a new King emerged from the caves under the Meneltarma.

Pharazôn stood still, until the chant subsided on its third return.

“Thanks, my friends.” He forced a smile. “I am neither a king nor a god, but I have indeed survived Darkness.”

Many people cheered. He waited for this to subside, too.

“Now, let us take Arne -and then, we will march on Mordor!”

The words had come to his mind almost unbidden, like a sudden impulse, spurred by the hateful remembrance of the creature’s mockeries and its undignified escape back to the safety of his master’s fortress. He half-expected many to balk at them, as the battle had been long and exhausting, and the casualties by Orcs and that strange creature of darkness must have been considerable. The cheer, however, was even louder than the previous one. He looked around, and was amazed to discover nothing but awe and adoration shining in every countenance. He knew he had always been well-liked, admired even, but this was beyond that, somehow -this was a fervour he had only seen among pilgrims crossing the threshold of a temple. If he wanted to ride into the dark abyss of his dreams, they would follow him.

King of Men, the cold voice hissed in his mind. Pharazôn blinked several times, in an effort to dislodge it.

“Adherbal, summon a herald to carry our message to the King of the Arnians.”

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

The message was as cold as it was concise: King Xaron had to open the gates of his city and deliver himself to the Legate of the King of Númenor for trial, or else his entire people would be either massacred by the Númenórean army or starved to death in a pointless siege. The first time, the King sent only one word as an answer: never. A day later, however, he had opened his gates and dismounted from his horse to be taken before Pharazôn.

“Is this a joke?” Merimne spat, staring in amazement at the figure who was dragged before them. She had survived the battle, to Pharazôn’s unspoken relief, but her arm was seriously injured and she chafed under the restraints that the healers had put on her, binding it to her chest and forbidding her to move anything from her waist to her neck.

As Pharazôn looked in King Xaron’s direction, it became immediately apparent why she had said that. He had seen Prince Noxaris, both alive and dead, and though he had never set eyes on his brother before, he had assumed that he had to be an older man. The King of the Arnians, however -or at least the man who claimed to be King of the Arnians- looked much younger, and considerably less impressive. He was short and rather fat, almost as pale as a lady, and his face, shaved in the Númenórean fashion, was as round as the moon. The most flattering thing that could be said of him is that he was not shaking in fear, but instead stared back at them in stony silence.

Pharazôn stood up, his anger flaring. Would the Arnians dare to play games with him?

“Is this the King of Arne?” He looked around, at the Númenórean captains and commanders who surrounded him. “Who among you can vouch for it?”

Adherbal stepped forwards. His eyes were fixed on the prisoner with a mixture of shock and fascination.

“I can, my lord prince. This is indeed the King of Arne. I was at his coronation, fourteen years ago.”

He must have been a child by then, Pharazôn thought, if his reckoning of barbarian years was accurate.

“Well, then. King Xaron of Arne, do you relinquish your Sceptre and all your rights of succession in favour of the Númenórean King, and submit to judgement for betraying the alliance and committing treason?”

The moon face glared back at him.

“I am here only for the sake of my people. I relinquish nothing.”

A faint murmur arose around them, which Pharazôn quelled with a gesture of his hand. Inside him, the anger was growing anew. What was it with all those traitors? They joined hands with Mordor, caused the death of thousands of Númenóreans, not to mention their own people, rode to the battlefield alongside creatures of darkness, and then acted like they had never done anything unlawful. The Merchant Princes of Gadir were one thing, but he would not tolerate such behaviour from an Arnian.

“Is that your final answer?”

Their eyes met. Xaron did not only not look away, which would have been bad enough, but seemed to have the evil courage to expect him to avert his glance. When it became apparent that Pharazôn was not going to do anything of the sort, the barbarian’s eyes narrowed in contempt.

“You are the Prince Pharazôn, are you not? The son of the Princess of the South. We used to hear about her from our grandfather, King Xaris the Second. He had very fond memories of the time when she worked as a sacred whore in the temple of Ashtarte-Uinen in Gadir.”

The murmur was not faint this time: it was loud and ominous, but Pharazôn did not bother to silence it anymore. All that mattered now was the eyes set on him, those of this contemptible barbarian monarch and, above all, those of his men, who could not see him lose his composure in public. Not for something like this.

Not for the sake of the woman whose name they had secretly heard him call in his dreams, in the nights when he saw her burst in flames and his traitorous voice escaped his control.

“Very funny”, he smiled, a smile as frozen as the dark void under the spectre’s iron armour. “Kill him.”

As he strode away from the turmoil, he became aware of someone following his footsteps. Guessing both his identity and his intentions, he made no attempt to slow down which could make it any easier for him.

“My lord. My lord, wait!”

After the fourth call, he finally stopped in his tracks.

“No man in this whole army questions my decisions. Except of course for you, Barekbal. You can no longer stop pestering me than you can stop breathing.”

“I am not here to question your decision”, the man argued. Pharazôn snorted.

“Then why are you here?”

“So far, ancient custom dictated that such executions of enemy leaders had to take place in Númenor. Even you, my lord prince, have always endeavoured to respect tradition. And the King…”

“This King does not want blood to be spilled on his precious marble floors. “For a moment, for a single, short, isolated moment, he allowed his contempt to shine through. “Let us humour him.”

Barekbal said nothing.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

The King of Arne’s execution was the first of many others in the bloody days that ensued. Having renounced his right to delegate to a higher responsibility, in what Pharazôn persistently refused to call a hot-headed moment, he had to follow through the trials of so many aides, ministers and distant kinsmen that at some point he felt almost overwhelmed by disgust and impatience. He felt like he was wasting his time directing his anger at pointless targets, as unsympathetic as those might be, instead of moving any closer to his real objective. His whole reality became dominated by the red blur of death, the bleak progress of bureaucracy, and what was perhaps the most unnerving thing of all, the intriguing of the women in the Palace. At times, and more and more often as days went by, he felt as if it would have been a good idea to kill them, too.

In Arne, men and women formed what amounted to two separate courts. From what he could gather after the first few days, the women’s court was organized around two prominent figures: Queen Valentia, the King’s widow and sister, and her cousin, Princess Xara, who had been married to Prince Noxaris, and whose sons had been in line for the throne. The two eldest had died in battle with their father, leaving Pharazôn’s hostage in Gadir as the only identified survivor. Since the Queen had a baby daughter, Phaleris was the heir to the throne now, and Númenor would probably make him King after he was raised in the Island. As soon as both parties had managed to obtain this information, it did not seem to matter much to them that their kingdom was laid waste, that men were dying around them or even that their husbands had just passed away. Princess Xara, a middle-aged woman who wore gaudily dyed dresses and makeup even though she was supposed to be in mourning, had restricted her advances to inviting him to her rooms twice, to interrogate him in every detail about her son’s whereabouts, security and health, and ask him to look after the boy’s safety, as he was the only remaining treasure of her life. Pharazôn had done his best to be polite, and that had been all.

The Queen, however, was another matter. She had been to see him every day, often appearing to chance upon him in a manner that he had to wonder if she had spies following his every movement. She was older than her brother-husband, but an impressive beauty nonetheless, as he had heard his own men remark over their cups. Her aristocratic elegance and spectacular attire, covered in precious jewels from the emerald diadem in her head to the silver thread in her shoes, would have put most of the ladies of Armenelos to shame.

The first time, Pharazôn had thought that she wanted to beg for someone’s life, so he tried to look for a delicate way to tell her that she should mind her own business. Then, she gave him a dazzling smile, and all the words he had been searching for vanished from his mind.

“I was wondering if your Royal Highness would accept a drink in the shade of our peach tree garden”, she intoned, with a graceful bow. Behind them, he heard whispers.

“As soon as my obligations permit it, my lady”, he replied, gathering back his thoughts. He tried to stress the word ‘obligations’, in an attempt to subtly convey how improperly she was acting, but she merely smiled and claimed that she would be waiting for him.

In the end, he had paid her that visit, only to discover that “a drink” meant tray after tray of coloured beverages in blown glass cups, and elaborate barbarian dishes brought in by a procession of ladies. He refused all of them, claiming that he had already eaten. Surely such level of false affectation must be hiding some kind of design on his life, and what better way to do it than poison?

“Is there anything you wish to tell me, my lady?”, he asked after a while, deciding it was time to go straight to the point. She let one of her ivory-pale hands travel towards her chest, and sighed deeply.

“In our childhood, we Arnians are taught that the dead will always stay among us. Their passing might bring us sadness, but in the end, it is the living which should worry us most of all. It pains me to think of my poor nephew in the Island beyond the seas, so far away from home” she said, picking a golden grape between two fingers and putting it into her mouth. “You seem an honourable man, aside from a great warrior. If only you would agree to look after him, it would bring an immense relief to my heart.”

“Princess Xara already asked this of me.” It had sounded more believable then.

“Of course, of course. The poor dear is so devastated. To have her husband not only die a traitor on the battlefield, but also take two of her sons with him in his pointless attempt! Such a ghastly business!”

“Yes. Well.” Pharazôn was so thunderstruck at this level of effrontery that he was rendered speechless. So Noxaris was the only traitor now? Did these barbarians live even shorter lives than the ones near Umbar, to the point that what had happened a week ago was already the long-forgotten past for them? “I must leave now, my lady. As much as I have enjoyed your company, I still have much to do.”

But this was not the last he had seen of her. If she hated him, as she surely must, she hid her emotions so well behind a veil of elegant manners, warm smiles and a thousand subtle ways of conveying womanly admiration, that there were moments when his own mind began to doubt itself. He felt as if things were truly not as he remembered them, that she had been a prisoner of Noxaris and his Mordor allies, and that he had fought this war to rescue her.

It had been Adherbal, who had spent most of his life in the Bay of Gadir, who finally handed him the key to solve this riddle. One night, as they were both drinking together with Barekbal and Merimne, the conversation shifted toward the fabulous trophies they had found in King Xaron’s storerooms: jewels and ornaments and weapons of considerable antiquity, most of which had originally come from Númenor through the kingdom’s ties with the Merchant Princes.

“That longsword that shines under the light of the moon and the sun must have belonged to a King,” Barekbal argued. “And I don’t mean a king of Arne. I wonder how those merchants managed to get a hold of it.”

“Ar Adunakhôr. Debt.” Adherbal explained, his consonants slurring a little. “Enough said.”

“I wonder why the Arnians would want such a thing. It is of no use to them”, Merimne said with a frown. “Not even most of you Númenóreans are tall enough to wield it.”

“Why would they want to wield it? Locked in their vaults, it gives them status.”

Merimne snorted in disdain.

“Did you turn this people into fools when you made them your allies?”

“I know someone who can wield this sword”, Pharazôn intervened. He had been drinking much, as the wine helped him attain the luxury of a dreamless sleep, but saying little. “Do you remember Amandil, Barekbal? Or Hannishtart, as he used to be called?”

The commander stiffened.

“Oh, yes. He was under my command for a time, in the Middle Havens. Before he became the Lord of Andúnië, of course.”

“Well, he has a son who is well over a head taller than I am.”

“By the Lord of Battles, that must be a sight to behold!”

“In any case, if you wish to keep it, you are entitled to a third of the spoils.”

“The Prince is a legate, though”, Barekbal reminded Adherbal. How that man could wish to argue law even when drunk was something that Pharazôn found remarkable.

“Oh, and who was the last Númenórean who won a war as a legate? Did that ever happen?” Adherbal’s arms flailed in an amusing way when he argued. “The Prince is creating a precedent, this should allow for some leeway. Apparently, her Royal Fairness the Queen of Arne thinks so, too.”

Pharazôn let the cup fall back on the table.

“What do you mean by that?”

Adherbal did not even blink.

“Well, only that she seems to believe that the King would not mind if you ruled Arne by her side.”

“Are you joking? That woman knows as well as I do that her nephew is the heir to the throne.”

“But that is not really true, is it? I mean, according to Arnian law.”

For a moment, he was so stunned to see Adherbal acting like Barekbal that he needed a moment to register the information. As he did so, his eyes narrowed.

“What of Arnian law?”

“Well, that in this realm, succession is passed on the female line. The eldest daughter born to the royal couple receives the Sceptre, and she has to choose her husband among her closest kin. Brothers, if possible”, he added, with a grimace of disgust.

“But Xaron was the King!” And he was younger than his brother, he remembered, his confusion growing by the moment.

“Oh, yes, he acted as the King. He ruled the land and led his troops to battle and all that, though this one was not quite up to the task, was he? But she was the one who chose him.”

It was not the most ludicrous thing that Pharazôn had ever heard; in Harad, he had been a witness to barbarian practices of every shape and kind. He had laughed those off easily, but now, he found that he did not feel very amused.

“Well, even if she has somehow conceived the delusion that I would marry her, and that the King would ever agree to that, she must know that I am not her close kin, and therefore excluded from the succession!”

Adherbal shrugged.

“Yes, but you are a Númenórean prince. The Númenórean prince who just conquered Arne. Maybe she thinks that those credentials will be enough.”

“She has run out of brothers now. “Barekbal chimed in. “If she does not find a replacement, she will not be able to remain Queen, and her beloved cousin will usurp her place.”

“This is revolting.” As usual, Merimne was the most adept at putting complex thoughts in a few words. “I thought that she wanted revenge for her dead husband.”

“That possibility occurred to me, too. At first”, Pharazôn nodded, trying to suppress the train of thought that was emerging in his mind: of him becoming a king in the mainland, living in barbarian splendour in a fortress atop a hill, building his own kingdom…

…fighting Mordor on one side and Númenor on the other....

“If I were her, I would have tried to seduce you, and once in bed, I would have waited until you fell asleep and slit your throat.” Merimne insisted. “That would have been the honourable thing to do.”

Barekbal and Adherbal stared at her, and Barekbal opened his mouth to utter a retort, but Pharazôn cut him before they could start fighting.

“I am relieved to hear that I am surrounded by such honourable people” he said, drily. His thoughts, however, were still wandering elsewhere, pondering the implications of this new disclosure.

“So… what of her daughter, then? Is she supposed to be the next Queen?”

“The next King will be appointed by the Númenórean Sceptre, and the next Queen will be the woman who weds him,” Barekbal said, firmly.

“Though perhaps not all the Arnians will agree,” Adherbal pointed out. Wonderful.

“She will have to be betrothed to her cousin, then. As soon as she grows her first teeth, if possible.”

“But according to our law, cousin marriage is incestuous. I don´t know if the King…”

“He can choose between that and killing her, then.” Pharazôn stood up; he could still hold himself quite steadily. Perhaps he needed to drink more. “I will not make that decision for him, too.”

“Or he could do neither, and then send us again next time there is a revolt”, Merimne added, her features set into a blank mask that made it difficult to spot if she was being sarcastic or merely informative. Barekbal, however, knew her well enough as to take offense at her words.

“I hardly believe it is the place for a barbarian, even if she has been promoted to the war council, to discuss the King’s policies!”

“Barbarian or not, she is probably right”, Pharazôn said, refilling his cup so he could take it to his chambers with him.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

More than a month passed before they could contemplate safely leaving Arne. The strength of the Arnian army had been broken in war, their King was dead and the aristocratic class decimated, and the peasants were too busy emigrating West, looking for food in the areas where the crops had not been stolen or the fields destroyed by the passing armies. Even so, the citadel remained a risk, until the garrison of both fortress and walls, as well as the river outposts, was substantially reorganized and placed under Númenórean control.

This slowed down his progress to a considerable extent, however, and it was not until early summer that war preparations began in earnest. Pharazôn was feeling like a caged beast by then. His dreams had grown worse with time, more vivid and terrible, as if the phantom of darkness he had defeated had cursed him with its touch. Other fears of a more down-to-earth kind plagued him as well: he remained uneasy about the situation in Gadir, and he was also afraid of receiving dispatches from Númenor, forcing him to abandon his enterprise. During the campaign, he had been unreachable, deep in enemy territory, but surely news of the current situation of the war must have reached the Council by now. He was used to having free rein in most of his campaigns, but he could not fool himself: both King and Council had been following this one with much closer interest, waiting -perhaps hoping- for any signs of his treachery. Now that he was about to achieve his objective, it would be just like them to begrudge him what could be his greatest victory. It would take about a month for their orders to reach him here, so speed was even more of the essence.

He would not let them stop him. Sauron was the real enemy, the driving force behind all of Middle-Earth’s rebellions, and if he was not defeated, the entire war would have been in vain. No Númenórean had ever been so close to destroying him forever, either in Temple scrolls or in living memory. No one had led an army to the very gates of his stronghold and defeated him in battle, and, as the soldiers in his army whispered among themselves, none had looked into the face of Darkness and survived.

And not merely survived, he thought. Day after day, he grew more and more aware of the ways in which this darkness had shaped his spirit, making it colder, more purposeful, more focused in his goal. Sometimes, he wondered if the intensity of those dreams, the irrational fear that they awoke in him, and the creature’s black predictions on the distant battlefield could be nothing but his foe’s desperate attempts to turn him away from his path.

Then, suddenly, just two days before the planned date of their departure, Princess Xara asked for an audience in his chambers. Unlike her persistent sister-in-law, the Queen Valentia, Xara seemed to have given up pestering him after he had given her all the information he had about her son, so this development surprised him. Her new forwardness, too, seemed out of place, as she had not merely avoided seeking him in his own rooms before, but even fled any public spaces that could become ground for chance encounters, keeping to her own quarters, where she was always surrounded by women.

There were no women with her now: the two ladies who had accompanied her as she walked across the Palace remained on the threshold like guardian statues when she came in. After some hesitation, Pharazôn dismissed his own guards as well. He had not forgotten Merimne’s words about the ways of honourable revenge, but he believed he could handle one unwarriorlike woman on his own, and he did not intend to lower his guard.

“Please, my lady, have a seat”, he offered courteously. She did not look so gaudy today; her dress was made of a bright green fabric, but with few ornaments. The only signs of real luxury were the golden embroideries of the veil that covered her hair. This was apparently a requirement for women who left their own quarters, though most were so transparent that they might as well not wear anything at all.

She hesitated for a long time before finally accepting his offer. Even then, she sat gingerly, on the edge of the seat, as if she was intending to bolt off. When he offered her a drink, she refused it.

“You know, there is no reason for you to be afraid of poison”, he said, attempting a conversational tone. “If I wanted to kill you, my lady, I would have done so already.”

Before he had finished saying this, he was already aware of how tactless it had been. For a moment, he wavered, pondering whether he should offer her some sort of apology or go straight to the point and ask her what she was doing there, but before he could make up his mind, she spoke.

“I have a request to make of you, my lord.” He blinked, taken by surprise. There was nobody left on trial, what kind of request could that be?

His surprise increased when she suddenly stood up, and fell to her knees before him.

“Please,” she said, holding his gaze in hers with an intensity that shocked him. “Take me to Númenor as your prisoner.”

“What? That is not necessary! “He shook his head, trying to escape it, but she would not let go.” We have no quarrel with women. Please my lady, sit down.”

She might as well have been deaf.

“If my son is in Númenor, I wish to be with him. I do not care what else happens to me, even if I am imprisoned for life and if I do not see the light of the sun again.”

“Very well. I see that there has been an unfortunate misunderstanding.” Pharazôn tried to keep his voice even, but he was starting to feel exasperated. “As I told you before, my lady, your son will be the King of Arne one day. In Númenor, he will be raised by a prominent family, and once that he reaches his majority, seven or eight years from now, you will have him back. I said I had no reason to poison you, and now I must insist: I have no reason to lie to you, either.”

Princess Xara shook her head.

“You, the People of the Sea, do not understand. How could you? Seven years are but a moment to you, and a year passes in a blink of an eye. But for us, even a year is an eternity when we are half a world away from those we love. Our life is short and uncertain: tomorrow we could grow sick and die, and in this cruel world where we live, we can die by violence as well. In seven years, my son could contract an illness, he could fall from a rooftop, he could drown. As for me, I am even frailer than he is. I am not young anymore, my health has never been strong, and I will have to ward myself against the Queen’s intrigues and elude her attempts on my life. Oh, I am not trying to cast myself as a victim.” she added when she saw him about to open his mouth. “I am aware that she has as much reason to mistrust me as I do her, and it might well be that I would emerge triumphant from our struggle, if I stayed here and fought to defend my position. But I no longer have the wish to do that. I will gladly relinquish the battlefield to her, abandon my faction, my place at Court, and follow you to the end of the world, if that is the only sure way to see my son again in this life.”

Pharazôn took a deep breath, trying to bring some order to the turmoil of his thoughts. There were many things that he wanted to say, but precisely because they were all relevant, he could not decide what should go first.

We are not immortal, my lady; we grow sick and old and we can be killed as well. We do not need you to inform us about the passing of time, was the first thought to form in his head.

Are you threatening me with intrigue wars in the Arnian Court unless I agree to take you along? Did I hear right that you would try to murder the Queen, or else be murdered by her? was a close second, which came with the swift impetuousness of anger.

Your son is much safer in Númenor than he would be anywhere else, was his third and final thought. There is advanced medicine there, he will be taught how to swim, and if he has an ounce of sense he will not fall from a rooftop.

But mothers were irrational in Númenor, too. He remembered how his own mother had forbidden him to play with swords, or receive any formal training as a child for fear that he would get hurt, and he had needed to find a boy in the temple who taught him everything he knew. A boy by the name of Hannimelkor.

Back then, she had also spent her days praying to the gods to protect him in his path to the glorious destiny that she had devised for him. Now that he dreamed of her every night, now that his sleep had become tainted by the paralyzing and irrational fear of loss, he had started to wonder if all her assurances that the Lord and the Lady of Númenor protected him had been nothing but a way to forestall her own fears for his fate. The bond between mother and son was strong, and it often felt like a welcome if confining refuge, but it could turn into the most terrible weakness known to man.

Even her city was weighing heavily in his mind now, because he saw it as an extension of her.

“Would I be able to convince you to rise, my lady, if I swore on the name of the Lord of Battles to look after your son?” It would not be the first time that he swore such an oath, he remembered, thinking wistfully of that night under the stars of Armenelos, before Amandil’s departure for the Forbidden Bay.

But of course, for her it would not be enough. Nothing would be enough.

“Please” she insisted. “He is the only thing I have left, after my other sons and my husband…”

The sentence was left unfinished, but she could not hide her tears. Growing pale at the realization, she rushed to wipe them with the back of her veil, and forced herself to breathe in long and deep gasps.

“Please, f-forgive me. I have strived to act properly and have not mourned them since they died as traitors, but… it was a moment of weakness. I meant nothing by it.”

So that was why she wore makeup and gaudy dresses, he thought, realization dawning on his mind. And instead of figuring it out for himself, as he should have, he had criticised her for her insensitive behaviour.

When had he become so callous? He tried to remember the first time he saw death: he had been a child, and for him it had been exciting to be allowed to stand next to the adults while those barbarian savages met their grisly end. If he had he been shocked at the sight of blood, he could not even recall.

The first time that he killed, it had been an Orc, and good riddance. The first man that he killed -a woman, actually, the one that was at the brink of killing Amandil in that desert tent in Harad- had not left a great impression on him, either, though he remembered his friend almost losing his mind over it, and jeopardising their survival for a while. Luckily, Pharazôn had kept his wits together for both of them in those moments of uncertainty. And then of course it had happened again, and again, until even Amandil had forgotten his misplaced moral outrage. They were enemies, all of them, people who met them on the battlefield, or snuck upon them by stealth, to either kill them or be killed. Few of them ever surrendered, and their women were just as bad as they were, hiding knives under pillows, as Merimne had said, to slit their throats as soon as they lowered their guard, and teaching their children to gouge the eyes out of Númenórean heads. There were exceptions: warriors who knew when they were defeated and accepted to join their ranks as allies, but asides from those -whom he had always treated with respect, even above the usual Númenórean standards- it was not possible to fight those people by being civilized to them.

He assumed it had been at that point, when things started to become blurred around the edges, but that was how it was supposed to be, in a place such as this.

You are not so different from us, are you?

If the three-way alliance of the Merchant Princes, Arne and Mordor should have proved something, it was that Merimne was right in this: they were not so different from barbarians. His own kinsmen, born from unbroken lines of powerful Númenórean descent, had been a part of this, no less than the Arnians had. And yet, he had unleashed all his anger on the latter. Perhaps it was unfair, if one thought about it, but it was nothing out of the usual either, and he still felt no regret for anything he had done. He would have still cut off the insolent head of the young buffoon chosen by his power-hungry sister as puppet ruler of Arne, of his nobles and ministers, and if that son of a bitch Noxaris and his sons had left the battlefield alive, he would have killed them too. In a few days, he would be glad to leave this hole and march on Mordor, which was his true purpose, and he did not care for what happened to any of them afterwards, as long as they didn’t cause trouble again.

What was it with this woman, then? Though she could not bear arms or sit on the Council, she might not be wholly innocent. She had shared the bed of one of his enemies and gave birth to others, and she hated him for killing them, without the slightest shadow of a doubt. And yet, as she saw her there, begging to be able to see her child, she made him think of his mother, and he felt almost as evil as Sauron.

You brought this upon yourselves, he was at the brink of saying. But he did not.

“Very well, I will honour your request” he found himself saying instead. “Once this campaign is over, you will join your son in Gadir and you will both sail to Númenor with me. I will leave word that you should be escorted there, even if I myself should not return. But I will only do this if you leave that position right now.”

Mumbling her thanks, the Princess let him help her to her feet, nervously dabbing at her eyes. Her look of happiness was still tinged with anxiety.

“May I have some water to wash my face? If the Queen’s women should see me like this…”

“There is a basin here somewhere”. Go, look for it and leave me alone, he thought. Her visit had disquieted him: even the cold sense of purpose that had not abandoned him since that fateful night on the battlefield seemed to have shattered briefly. All the emotions that filled him now were hot by contrast: shame, doubt, and something else that he could not quite identify, but which had nothing to do with sexual desire, as the presence of a woman might have led to expect.

That night, for the first time in months, he did not have the dream of his mother burning. Instead, he dreamed of a woman in a veil who walked a path of shadows, calling for her children in tones of increasing desperation.  Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks, and Pharazôn realized that she must have spotted him.

“My son! I thought that you were dead!”

“I am not your son, my lady”, he said, but his words died in his mouth when he saw the Princess Melkyelid’s face emerging from the veil. Suddenly afraid, knowing that she would die as she did every night, he ran towards her, to try to get to her before the fire reached her. She gazed back at him, happily, and extended her arms towards him.

As he pulled her into an embrace, however, his own arms closed over thin air, and he stood in the shadows, alone.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

They woke him before dawn, when the darkness was still thick enough as to seem part of his haunting dream. For a moment, he thought that he had been yelling again, and cursed himself for his lack of control, but the person who stood before him was not any of the room guards or servants, but Barekbal himself.

Knowing that something serious must have happened gave him the needed impulse to sharpen his wits in a matter of seconds.

“What is the matter?” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking for a cloak to cover his nakedness.

Under the light of the candle, Barekbal’s features had a positively gloomy air about them.

“My lord prince, there was a dispatch…”

“From Númenor?” Damn. Damn the King and damn the Council and damn his evil luck. He had been about to leave…a few more days, and he would have departed.

“No.” The army commander shook his head, shattering the thread of his thoughts as soon as it had begun to form. “From Gadir. The city has revolted.”

“What?”

“The rebels are not soldiers, and they are no match for the Númenórean army, but the Commander is afraid that this may end with the city destroyed, and Númenórean citizens killed. He says that this exceeds his responsibility. So far, they have barricaded themselves and managed not to engage, but the situation may change very soon, depending on what the rebels do. He begs you to return at all speed.”

Soon. Soon. Pharazôn wanted to laugh, and shout at the same time. That letter could not be less than five days old.

“What are your orders, my lord?”

Go to hell, he thought. Go to hell, all of you.

In the sudden haze of his mind, a cold laugh that he somehow recognized as that of his enemy was ringing, Gadir was burning, and his mother burst in flames for the thousandth time. Far in the distance, in his throne in Armenelos, the King’s eyes were alight with the glow of victory.

Years after this, a chilling voice whispered in the back of his mind, you will still be wondering if you made the right choice. If you could have defeated me. If you could have been there in time.

If you could have saved her.

“The lighter troops are ready to march already. I will take them to Gadir today”, he said. “You will stay in charge of Arne.”

Barekbal bowed solemnly, before walking away.