Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

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Visions

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“My son. I… I need to see my son. I have to… no!”

“Shhh.” He wiped the sweat from her forehead, tracing a slow curve with his hand. “You need to rest.”

Her eyes had flown wide open, and Amandil was almost tempted to look back, for in her current state of agitation it seemed as if she had seen something behind him. But if she had, it was invisible to him, and he refused to continue this thread of thought in fear of where it may lead. For thousands of years, the imagination of mortals had fashioned ghosts and monsters of all shapes and kinds, who crept on them in their most vulnerable moments, trying to steal their souls and bury them in darkness. They were the fruit of obfuscation, of the irrational terror that the Dark Enemy of the World had once sown in their hearts after they awoke beneath the Shadow, and if sometimes they appeared to have an entity of their own, it was because they fed on their deepest fears.

Amandil did not need terrors of this kind. What he could see with his own eyes was enough: the woman he had always loved, lying on her bed as if the slightest movement could break the invisible links that pulled her bones and sinews together, just like his mother in that moonlit villa near Rómenna.

Slowly, Amalket’s eyes began to droop as she fell asleep again. Her spells of consciousness did not last long, and it was unusual for her to be awake for more than a half hour. Still, it seemed to be becoming harder for her to stay asleep as well, for after a while she would always be jerked awake as if by an inexorable force, perhaps some kind of physical pain that they had been unable to locate, or perhaps dreams. Once that she did, someone had to be there for her, to take the place of the son she invariably sought until her anxiety faded into bitter disappointment. Sometimes, it would be one of her grandchildren, but usually it was Amandil, who had not left the Andúnië mansion of Armenelos for the last three days. His father had volunteered his help too, but he did not wish to leave Númendil alone with what he was bound to see as a repetition of one of his worst nightmares. He seemed to have recovered from the strange mood which had come upon him after the King returned from Mordor, but Amandil did not want him exposed to anything that could upset him again. If it depended on him, his father would be in Andúnië instead of here, forced to share in his own gloom and their family’s bleak political struggles.

“No one has forced me to share in anything I did not wish to share”, Númendil spoke from the door, his voice a mere whisper which still managed to carry across the room as clearly as the ringing shout of a herald. “And, though I am moved by your concern for my feelings, perhaps you should consider that having gone through this means that I could help you.”

They had had this argument -if one could speak of arguments wherever Númendil was concerned – so many times that Amandil had lost count.

“I do not need help”, he muttered crossly. “And there is no need for you to be here. You are not the person she wants to see.” And neither am I, he thought, wondering why he still bothered to leave things unsaid in their conversations.

“I was not the person Emeldir wanted to see, either.” Númendil’s soft footsteps approached him, and he sat by his side. “But that was not because she did not love me. She knew I would be with her no matter what happened, and that I would never leave her side, so all her thoughts were bent upon the one who was not there.”

Amandil swallowed with difficulty. There was something terrible about those memories, but he had always thought that it lay on the parallels to the situation at hand. When his father put it like this, however, he realized that the true pain lay in the difference.

“But I arrived, didn’t I? She saw me. Her hope was not in vain.” And she had smiled, a smile so devastating for him that it had even blinded him to the possibility that she could have died happily. “Elendil will never come. She will never see him.”

It took him all his strength to keep his voice firm until the end. Númendil laid a hand upon his shoulder in a comforting gesture.

“Halideyid”, she mumbled in dreams, as if she had heard him speak his name. Maybe she had. “Halideyid.”

“I cannot bear this anymore.” Pushing his father’s hand away, Amandil stood on his feet, and began pacing restlessly around the room. “There must be something I can do.”

“Your son cannot leave Arne. Even if he did, he would not arrive in time.” The words were not meant to hurt, but they still did. Anger filled his chest, and it did not take Amandil long to find a target.

“So much suffering, caused by the petty whims of kings! Mother and I were separated by false accusations, and now my own son is away because the mighty Golden General decided that he had to keep him as far from me as possible! Curse him!”

“The King did not force your son to go to the mainland. Elendil sensed that his fate lay there, and he followed his own heart.”

“Oh, are you defending him now? Do you think his spies are here, in this room?” It was so gloriously satisfying to vent all his frustrations. “Well, if they are, they can tell him to go to hell from me, Amandil of Andúnië!”

The speech ended in a raised voice, and as soon as he heard it reverberate across the room he realized his mistake. Paling, he approached the bedstead, where his worst fears were confirmed: Amalket was stirring again, her eyes wide in fright, not at some invisible ghost but at his own shameful display. He fell to his knees and laid his hands on her shoulders, trying to comfort her as he could.

“I am sorry. Amalket, I am so sorry. I did not mean to wake you. Please, go back to sleep.”

Númendil stood up. His countenance held no traces of judgement, but he still seemed to have deduced that to engage Amandil in conversation was not a good idea at the moment. Too busy with his attempts to calm Amalket’s anxiety, Amandil did not even bide him farewell, or saw him leave the room.

At long last, she seemed to grow aware of her surroundings, and her body grew still in his arms.

“Water” she asked in a raspy voice. He grabbed the cup from the bedstead, pressing it against her parched lips until she began swallowing carefully.

Númendil was right. This was no one’s fault, except their Creator’s. And since they could not be angry with Him, they wildly sought other targets, as if this could somehow make their feelings more acceptable. This was as true for all the Númenóreans who hated the Elves as it was for him at this moment. Even those who hated the Faithful could trace their anger back to this source, for what had the Faithful originally been but friends and collaborators of the Elves, who through this proximity got to share in their blame for being invulnerable to the bane brought upon mortals? They even lived longer because the Elves had rewarded them with a part of their blessing, they said, no matter that Amandil would never have asked for such a thing for himself if he had been presented with a thousand chances to do so.

They were not blessed, but cursed, he thought. And then, the blasphemous idea slowly crept into his mind: if everyone dared lay the blame where it belonged, perhaps they would be living in a more peaceful world. For Eru was beyond them, and He could never be hurt or affected by their recriminations. Those other targets, however, could suffer and bleed, and sometimes they did.

As he grew aware of the strange direction of his musings, Amandil discarded them in shame. That was why he had never been a thinker, he reminded himself. Since he was a child in the Temple of Melkor, he had been careful not to let his wild, confused thoughts lead him to places that invariably brought more pain and strife to his mind. Perhaps Lord Valandil and Lord Hiram had been right about one thing: for someone whose childhood had been marked by contradictions of such magnitude, there was no way back into the fold -into any fold.

“Do you think he will be coming tomorrow?” Amalket asked hopefully. He took a deep breath.

“Perhaps.” Always lying, always, until the very end. “But you must be patient. The journey from the mainland is long.”

While he spoke, he heard footsteps behind him again. Surprised, he turned towards their source; he had not expected Númendil to be back so soon.

“I thought…” he began, then fell silent as he realized that his father was holding something in his hand. It was a dark, round stone, one of the Palantíri.

“No”, he said. From the bed, Amalket was straining her gaze to look in the same direction as him, probably to make sure that the newcomer was still not her son. “That cannot be done, Father. Do you think I have never thought of it?” She lost interest, and her eyes slowly grew unfocused again. “Amalket never had the ability to use it when she was healthy and strong. Now, even the slightest attempt might kill her.”

Númendil sat on the chair, unperturbed.

“There is a way. Someone who used the Stone could transmit their thoughts to her.”

“Only the Elves…” Words came sometimes to his mouth faster than thoughts, but as the second thread managed to catch up with the first, his voice died in his throat. “You… can do that?”

“Yes.” There was no trace of pride in his father’s countenance, though in his life Amandil had known of many who would believe they had the right to be worshipped for much less.

Feeling that there was nothing else he should say, and that any attempt to squeeze words out of his chest now would either end in failure or meaninglessness, he sat back on his own chair, still holding Amalket’s hand. This time, her sleep seemed to last longer, and though it might have been his imagination playing tricks on him, it also looked more peaceful.

Meanwhile, Númendil’s eyes remained fixed on the dark surface of the stone. He did not move, nor did he grimace or writhe as Amandil did whenever he tried to focus his thoughts on it, but there was no doubt that he was using it. Fascinated, the lord of Andúnië stared openly at his father’s endeavours. He did not need to be alone, not even to sit in the dark to free his mind from all the distractions which always gripped Amandil’s attention, even as he forced himself not to think of them.

At some point, the grey eyes snapped shut. Then, after what looked like an eternity, they flew open again. Just as Amandil was pondering whether it would be harmful to speak, cold fingers grabbed his free hand, and before he recovered from the surprise, a torrent of anguished thoughts broke into his mind.

I am sorry. I am so sorry. I promised her I would be back, and she believed me. I lied to her, Father, and no matter how many years I live, I will never find forgiveness.

Somehow, it was much easier this way than it was when he was facing the Stone himself. All he had to do was to let his own thoughts flow, and Númendil would send them quickly and painlessly across the wide expanses of the world.

It is not your fault, Elendil. Do not blame yourself for it. The hand in his stirred, and he realized that Amalket was about to wake again. He swallowed. Now, you must do a great effort to suppress your grief, because she will be able to notice if you do not. And if she perceives that her beloved son is unhappy, she will be devastated.

Do not worry. He was not even sure anymore if Númendil’s voice was coming through his ears or through his mind. I cannot make emotions disappear, but I can ease them in the transmission.

Taken by a renewed feeling of wonder at his father’s easy command of those impossibly complex processes, Amandil moved Amalket’s hand, then gently disentangled his own until he managed to leave it in Númendil’s grasp. He held his breath, afraid that something would go wrong in spite of all. His heart beating hard against his chest, he studied every wrinkle of her countenance with apprehension, waiting for any sign of change, and yet dreading it at the same time.

When the change came, it was in the shape of a warm and blissful smile, the first he had seen in her features since so long ago he could not even remember. Tears of joy welled in her eyes, then trickled down her cheeks as she looked behind him, at something that nobody but her was able to see. But this time, he knew it was no evil ghost.

“Do not… do not worry for me, Halideyid. I am fine. I-it is just a little illness. I will be up in no time”, she mumbled hoarsely. “I- I was just… I thought…. I feared that I would not see you again. But I was being silly, and I see it now. I love you, my son. I love you.”

As her head fell back on the pillow and her hand grew limp in his grip, a single tear fell down Númendil’s pale cheek.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

“How did this happen?”

Zimraphel sat back, watching him walk in circles around the room with a calm that he found infuriating. It was almost as if she was mocking him.

“You should know the answer to that question.”

“As a matter of fact, I am not sure I do.” It had been two years since he had begun struggling with this nightmare, and he had not allowed himself to forego caution for a moment. First, he had spent over a year trying to control his urges; when he realized the impossibility of keeping that strategy for an indefinite amount of time, he had availed himself of every means at his disposition to prevent her from getting pregnant. They should not have failed, they almost never failed, and yet, this time, they had.

“There are things for this, you know. Things to prevent a woman from conceiving. And they usually work.”

The memories of the distant past had come only to mock him. To remind him that, after so many years, the young man who thought that his friend was an idiot who could not even manage to stick his cock anywhere without making a mess of things was in fact the greatest idiot of the two.

“Who cares why it happened? It happened.” he had shrugged back then, angering Amandil even further. Still, as dismissive as he might have been out of sheer ignorance, at least he had been there to help with the outcome. No one was there to help him now.

No one, but the one whose help he could never accept.

As if she had been reading his thoughts -which she probably had-, she shrugged.

“You cannot dismiss his foresight, as you cannot dismiss mine. No matter how hard you tried to fight Fate, you could never have hoped to hold it back indefinitely. This child was destined to be conceived, and your choice cannot be postponed any longer.”

He paused in his tracks, shaken by her choice of words.

“What do you mean? Have you foreseen that it will be our last chance, too?”

She sighed, as if she did not want to have to tell him this.

“Yes.”

Pharazôn tried to ignore the cold spreading through his chest.

“And why is this? Is it because of age?”

“Perhaps”, she answered, suddenly evasive.

“What do you mean, perhaps?” Now, he was walking straight towards her, grabbing her face with his hands, forcing her to look up. “What else have you seen?”

“Leave me alone”, she hissed, struggling to break free. “I do not want to answer now.”

He did not let go.

“Tell me.”

“Do you love me?”

Her sudden changes of mood had been familiar territory for him since they became involved. Without letting go, he nodded.

“Of course I love you.”

“Then avail yourself of his help.”

Pharazôn frowned. Why wouldn’t she tell?

“It is you that I love, not the unborn child. And I will not ask Sauron for help with something you have already lived through many times. If we have to remain childless, so be it. We still have many years to find a solution for the succession problem.” And if you have something to say, say it now.

“Do you remember the first time that we met, after you sneaked into the gardens of the West Wing? You asked me for my name, and I said that I had two. My father called me Míriel, but I hated it.”

Pharazôn had memories of that day -how could he not-, but not of that conversation. In a moment such as this, he did not see the reason why he should remember something a child had said to another so long ago. But he also knew that, despite her reputation, she did not bring things up without a reason.

“And?”

“You said that it sounded like a cat’s name, or something Elvish. I said that it was an Elven name, the name of a woman…”

“… who wanted to die”, he finally recalled. She nodded, her expression grim.

“This child will not die in the third month”, she whispered, in a voice that was almost impossible to hear, in spite of their closeness. “It will take root in my womb, and grow bigger and stronger than all its brothers and sisters. But in the end, it will still not be enough. Nothing could be enough.” Her eyes were hollow and empty now, and instinctively, he stepped back. “The birth will be long and painful, and at the end of it the child will die, taking me with it. I will wither and weaken, like Míriel, longing for a death that will end my suffering. Now you see why I hated my father for giving me that name, and why I abhorred the very sound of its twisted mockery. I was to be a failed Míriel, a woman who poured her life force into nothing”. All of a sudden, her lips curved into a smile, warm and stirring, and it felt as if life had trickled back into her features. “But I know that this will not happen, because you are here, and you will save me. Us. I know that you will.”

In his life, Pharazôn had faced Orcs, Men, wraiths, even spirits of darkness from before the creation of the world. But at this point, he could not prevent himself from turning away from those black eyes, and leaving the room.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

“So.” He was sitting in the damp darkness as easily as the first day, as if it was the environment of his choice, and perhaps it was. “You need me to help the Queen.”

“No.” Pharazôn crossed his arms over his chest. “I need you to tell me what to do.”

Sauron’s features remained carefully neutral, but he could almost imagine the creature’s evil amusement at his pitiful attempts to deny his surrender. For this was nothing but surrender, pure and simple. He had held out for months, until it could not be denied anymore that Zimraphel’s pregnancy had surpassed the stages of all the previous ones. At the beginning, the idea of abortion had hovered in and out of his mind, but it, too, had been defeated by Zimraphel’s mesmerizing notions about Fate. For this twisted rationality, which had gradually insinuated itself into his mind, the only absolution for their sin would be to believe in this fate, but to believe in it he needed to see it with his own eyes. And with the passing of time, even this last resort had become just as dangerous as the rest of the options.

Pharazôn remembered the days when he used to flee her presence, terrified of the incest he was tempted to commit. If that young man had known back then where those sweeping impulses would take him, he might have fled so far that no one in Númenor would have seen him again.

That young man was lost, Zimraphel would say to him. He did not know of his own greatness, of what he would be able to do if he allowed himself to soar free.

Pharazôn had soared indeed, but against what he had once expected, he had found his freedom dwindling the higher that he flew. In the end, everything he had done had been the fulfilment of some prophecy, and if she was right, it had been leading him directly to this single choice.

“That is a remarkably narrow view of things. A typically mortal view”, Sauron remarked. “What I can give you is the ability and the power to choose in each and every situation that may present itself in the future. The choice will always remain yours. And is that not the greatest of all freedoms, to be always in control of one’s fate?”

“A bold claim, for someone who was unable to remain in control of his own fate.”

It might have been his imagination, but it seemed to him as if Sauron looked a little less smug at this.

“You are the King of Men now”, he said, his eyes gleaming with an undecipherable expression. “You could be greater than I was in my highest days. You could even be immortal, as I am.”

“Quiet!” He was not in the mood for fantastical promises. “I do not want to be like you in any way. And I am not here to debate, I am here so you can tell me how I may help the Queen.” The harder you try to have it look like the opposite of a surrender, the more you make it appear so, a voice that suspiciously reminded him of Amandil whispered in the back of his head. “Try to deceive me, and we will see just how hard it is to separate your spirit from that body that you wear.”

An empty threat, but if it makes you feel better, so be it. At first, this voice sounded like Amandil again, but then it became the voice of Sauron, who was facing him in silence, and he froze. He blinked several times, trying to clear his mind.

“I know of your worship of the Great God, whom you call by many titles. Too many mortal superstitions have been added to it through the centuries, but they have not been able to obscure a main core of truth”, the prisoner spoke after a while. For the first time in the conversation, Pharazôn snorted.

“What? Are you going to sputter that nonsense at me, too? And I thought I had enough with the clergy and the so-called Faithful arguing theology at each other, calling anything that does not fit their own view a superstition, and the rest the truth!”

Sauron frowned.

“Unlike them, I have been alive for long enough to remember.”

“So their Elves claim, too.” Pharazôn shrugged in irritation. “But having seen is not necessarily the same as reporting faithfully, as my ancestor Ar Adunakhôr already knew long ago. And I still fail to see what this has to do with the Queen’s situation.”

“If you keep interrupting me, you will never know.”

Now, that was a little too much insolence from someone who was imprisoned in a cell. But Pharazôn needed to start fighting the temptation to engage it, or it would be harder and harder to remain as detached as he needed to be.

“Go on.”

“There is a pillar of your faith which you commemorate every year in a variety of different occasions. It has been reduced to a symbolic gesture, with no more power than any other symbol, which is the strength of the belief of those who worship it. And yet, the reason why it is so deeply ingrained in your collective memories is because, once upon a time, that power was real.”

“And you are referring to…”

“I am referring to the sacrifice.”

“Oh.” Pharazôn considered this. “You mean that burning bulls at the flaming altar could give us victory in truth, and not merely give heart to the soldiers? That, if we performed the rites properly, we could not lose, regardless of the strength of our arms?””

Sauron raised his eyes from the spot on the floor where they had become temporarily lost.

“Yes, and no. That sacrifice is nothing but a symbol, though the role played by conviction in deciding the outcome of battles cannot be underestimated. I made the mistake of underestimating it once, and lost my best armies to the strongest-willed general I had encountered for an Age.”

Pharazôn could not be less interested in a flattering digression.

“So, what would it take for a sacrifice to be more than a symbol?”

Their eyes met, and for an instant, he felt the unseemly temptation to avert his. Luckily, he managed to withstand it.

“It would need to be real. A real sacrifice.”

For this is the original meaning of this sacrifice, of all the sacrifices performed here and the sacrifices that you perform yourselves, in your homes and hearths. The voice of High Priest Yehimelkor echoed loud and vibrant in his memories of the yearly temple celebrations. It is a pale reflection of the original sacrifice, the Lord’s sacrifice.

“You mean that I would need to kill myself?” It sounded ludicrous, even as an academic possibility. “But then I would never have more than one choice, would I?”

“Not necessarily. The meaning of sacrifice is to give away something which is worth as much as what you want. Indeed, you could die for another; that would be the most powerful sacrifice of all. But the King of Men has plenty of other… things to give away.”

Now, the conversation was veering into disturbing territory. Sauron’s choice of words was careful, but what could be guessed behind them made a shiver travel through his spine.

“What things?”

“Some of the barbarians in the mainland know. That woman of Harad who died in the desert, she knew, did she not?”

“How do you know about that?”

My death wish will be that every battle you fight ends in victory, and that you will take the Sceptre and become the king of your people, alongside the woman you love, she had said in her letter, that first and last letter which he still remembered by heart. My people believe that death wishes are always answered; there was once a man from my tribe who had his whole family killed so the power of their death wishes would make him king. But you are too civilized to understand this, too.

“Because you are thinking of her, and I cannot prevent myself from… hearing your strongest thoughts.” Pharazôn glared at him, but his mind was too much in turmoil to decide upon an appropriate retort. “Forget the barbarians, King of Númenor. Your own ancestors knew about this. Do you remember the old lore about the foundation of Númenor? And of Gadir? In both instances, someone had to die. And what do you do after you achieve a great victory? You bring the enemy leaders all the way to the Island to slaughter them in a public ceremony.”

“I wish I could have done that with you.” Pharazôn stared at him, disgusted.

“It does not have to be the death of a person”, Sauron continued, as if he had not even heard him. “Or even an animal. It is about worth, and some things can be more valuable than many people.”

“Speaking of worth, is this conversation worth the waste of my time? Let us give it one more chance, and go straight to the point.” The King of Númenor surrendered to the brief temptation of pacing around; when he stopped, he was standing farther apart from the fiend than he had been before. “What would I have to give away for the Queen to be safely delivered of my child?”

Sauron did not even pretend to hesitate.

“That question has an easy answer. If you wish to be given a new chance at building a lineage, it is only fitting that you sacrifice the Tree which has protected it in the past.”

“The White Tree?” Pharazôn did not know if he was more or less disturbed at this than at the idea of human sacrifice. On the one hand, the tree was but an ancient, glorified piece of wood, and before Tar Palantir no one had even spared it a second glance. Burning it was not like killing people in the altar of a temple as if they were cattle.

On the other hand, the reference to the prophecy attached to this tree acted like a wakeup call, and for the first time Pharazôn saw clearly what he was doing. He was standing here, doing what Amandil had warned him against: listening to the advice of an immortal being who wanted nothing more than to obliterate him and the lineage of the Númenórean kings, whom he was not strong enough as to defeat by force. Today, he would make him destroy what people perceived as a symbol of his power, and even in this very conversation, Sauron had shown himself to be aware of the importance of symbols. Tomorrow, he would try to warp his will into even more abhorrent directions.

“If I could warp your will, do you think I would not have done so already, King of Númenor? When will you stop thinking so little of yourself? You defeated me, and no one so weak and unworthy as you believe yourself to be would have been able to accomplish such a deed.”

Pharazôn’s face was hot; from the outside it would probably look flushed.

“I am done speaking with you”, he growled, walking in the direction of the stairs. But the voice still followed him.

“Do you truly believe an old prophecy to be more important than the lives of the Queen and your son?”

“My…?” For a moment, he froze in his tracks, but he regained his bearings very soon. “I do not believe anything of the sort. Your lies have merely failed to convince me.”

“I can prove that they are not lies.”

“Then do it. What do you need to sacrifice to escape this prison and return to Mordor?”

Sauron did not answer.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

He was running through the empty courtyard, as fast as his legs could carry him. Nothing but sheer willpower sustained his efforts, for exhaustion pierced his limbs like the point of a blade, and his lungs felt about to explode. Still, he knew he was going to run out of that soon, for he could never outrun the shadows that chased him, riding over the deafening roar of the waters.

Before him, hovering in the horizon like the unattainable shape of his destiny, the White Tree’s branches shone under the pale moonlight, ominously bare from the silver foliage that covered them at this time of summer. As he ventured a look at it, he realized that there was something small hanging from one of them. It was a fruit; a round-shaped white fruit unlike any other he had seen in the trees of either Island or mainland. He had to reach it, he knew, but it was too high, and he was no good at climbing.

And Malik could not help.

“Isildur”, the familiar, harrowing whisper reached his ears. “Isildur.”

“No”, he tried to say, but he had no voice left. He fell to his knees, his eyes fixed upon the floor, unable to raise them, unwilling to see. His chest heaved in great gasps, but the voice did not go.

“Isildur.”

“No.” This time, he managed to utter the word, but it did not matter; the shadows had won the race again, and he was dead. They both were.

“You must not die, Isildur. You have a great destiny, and you must fulfil it.”

“I cannot” he whispered. “I cannot.”

The voice became angry.

“Are you a coward?”

His body gave a painful start, as if he had been bludgeoned on the ribs with a blunt weapon. Raising his gaze, he braced himself for the inevitable sight, the one which would always meet him at the end of the way, no matter how long he tried to avoid it. But instead of what he had been expecting, he saw the Tree burst into flames before his eyes.

“You must not let it happen.”

Isildur woke up screaming.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

He had never gone as far in his dream as to see what he had just witnessed. That, Isildur thought as he washed the sweat away from his face in the courtyard fountain, might have one of the following two explanations: either Malik had been too busy meeting Ilmarë somewhere as to hear his cries and shake him awake, or the events happening in his dream were imminent.

“The White Tree” he mumbled aloud, in an attempt to gather his scattered thoughts by using his own voice as an anchor. “The White Tree has a fruit. The White Tree is burning.”

“Having those dreams again?” someone spoke behind him. Still uneasy from his ordeal, Isildur gave a jump, but calmed down when he realized it was just Malik. Then, however, he saw Ilmarë next to him, and panic at the supernatural gave way to more mundane concerns.

“What are you doing together? Are you mad? Do you want anyone to wake up and see you here? Is this what you call secrecy?”

“We were worried because we heard you, and…” Ilmarë began, but Isildur did not let her finish.

“Leave, right now! I do not care which one of you, but leave!”

For a moment, there was no sound behind his back, not even a whisper. Then, he heard the sound of paused footsteps, fading away in the distance. He threw more water over his face, wondering why it was still so hot.

“Perhaps.” He stopped, testing his voice to make sure that he would be able to say the next sentence in a perfectly even tone. “Perhaps I am finally getting to the bottom of this, now that you are not there to wake me. I see something hanging from one of the branches, a white fruit of some kind. And when I look at it, the whole tree starts to burn.”

“I have seen that fruit. But not in my dreams. “In shock, he realized that the voice behind him was female; he had been wrong to assume without looking. “It is still very small, but it has grown a little since last week. It has become the curiosity of the Palace, which only proves that courtiers have very boring lives.”

“Unlike you”, he retorted, more to hide his inner turmoil than anything else. “Is that… normal? For the White Tree to bear fruit? I mean, does it happen often?”

“Never, as far as priests and loremasters can tell. Not this Tree, at least. According to Great-Grandfather, the Tree this one came from did give fruit, but that was in the Blessed Lands.”

“So my dream is real.” This confirmation chilled his blood. “Do you think it is going to be consumed by flames, too?”

“Perhaps. Today…” Ilmarë’s voice trailed away, and she seemed to hesitate. Frustrated, Isildur turned to face her. She looked eerie under the moonlight, with her long, dark hair undone and falling wildly over her shoulders.

“What happened today?”

“The Queen said something strange. You know that she has been in much pain lately, because of her pregnancy. This morning, she had a crisis. It was… nothing serious, she was fine after she went to bed and took her medicine. The healer told her that she would be fine, which was a bad idea, because she dislikes people who pretend to know the future just for the sake of being nice. To think that he should be aware of this by now!”

“And what happened then?” Isildur cut her before she could stray too far from the subject that interested him. Ilmarë shrugged.

“She said that she would burn the White Tree. It had nothing to do with the subject at hand, but she does that many times, especially when someone displeases her, and he had. But...” She, too, seemed a little uneasy all of a sudden. “I could swear that she was looking at me as she spoke. And I wonder if she was trying to scare me, because I dream of it too! Perhaps it was a way of telling me that she knew my most secret thoughts. Isildur, do you think that she knows about Malik?”

His eyes widened.

“If she does, she must have known for a while now, and done nothing. Why should it matter to her? She has her own problems to worry about”, he reasoned, trying to quell her alarm. “Are you sure she spoke of burning the Tree?”

“Yes.”

“And have you seen it burning in your dreams, too?”

“Ye- no”, she corrected herself, her mind still on her own concerns. “It just stands there, in an empty courtyard. And there is a great wave, and it is going to drown us all, but then I wake up. Once, I saw…” Her voice trailed away, as if she had thought better of something. “It is so unsettling.”

“What did you see?” Isildur pressed on. She shook her head.

“Nothing.”

“Is it Malik?” It was a stab in the dark, but it was rewarded with success. Ilmarë’s face went deathly pale.

“How did you…? You have seen him, too!” It was not a question. “I only saw him once. He was holding my hand and dragging me away from the Sea, and then the water… the water….”

“Drowned him.” Isildur finished for her. “I know.”

“He does not believe in any of this. Dreams are dreams; they are not real, he always says. But I have both kinds of dreams, and they are not the same, and he is just too stubborn to accept it!”

“Tell me about it. I spent years in the mainland trying to prevent him from knocking me unconscious whenever I dreamed at night.”

“Once, I told him about what happened to him in my dream. He laughed at me. He said that my imagination was only right in one thing: that he would protect me from any danger.” She took a sharp breath. “Do you think it could be warning me that we may be discovered, and he is going to die because of me?”

“What does that have to do with the White Tree?”

“I do not know. Maybe it could be some sort of symbol?”, she ventured, but that was not convincing enough for Isildur.

“No, Ilmarë. We see the White Tree in all our dreams, and now, I have seen its newly grown fruit. The Queen said that she would burn it, and I saw it burn. And it is I who have seen those two things, I, who did not know about them beforehand” he expounded. “I believe the White Tree is at the centre of everything. And some force in Heaven is warning me that I have to solve the riddle and act on it before it is too late.”

“I could tell you if I happen to hear something else. But do not ask me to confront the Queen about it, because if there is the slightest chance that she knows about Malik…!”

“I understand. I understand!” he cut her, in exasperation. His instincts seemed bent on telling him that this was not the danger, that the source of all peril was related to the White Tree, and not to Ilmarë’s secret trysts. But still, he had enough wits left to understand her position, and he also had some idea of how frightening Ar Zimraphel could be. “I will speak to Lord Númendil about this. And I will also ask Grandfather about the Tree; he is a councilman, and perhaps he has heard something that neither of us knows.”

Ilmarë nodded in a rather vague manner. She still looked worried, Isildur realized belatedly, about the same thing that would worry him if he allowed that dam to open and flood his mind. But if he did that, he thought, he would fail the supreme entity who had seen fit to send this dream to him. Who was counting on him.

“Do not worry, Ilmarë”, he said, in the calmer voice that came to him under those circumstances. “Nothing will happen to Malik, as long as I am here.”

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, and he knew that he was remembering that time when they were ambushed by the tribesmen of the Vale. Damn, she could bear a grudge.

“He did not die back then, and let me remind you that if I had not won that battle, he would have.” He sighed. “Now, go back to bed. To your bed.”

She snorted, the first sign of spirit he had detected in her that night.

“Where did you think that we were?” she asked, walking away before he could put together an answer.