Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

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Death and Rebirth

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Ladies and gentlemen, this is chapter number 100! I cannot believe I managed to get here, and even less that some people are still with me. Thank you very much for reading, and especially thanks to those who have reviewed this thing since 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

Death and Rebirth

 

                                                                                                  

 

 

 

The Queen went into labour a month earlier than expected.

 

Amandil did not know of this until the royal messenger came to his house. In the last weeks there had been no summons, no Council meetings, nothing but a heavy, impenetrable silence, all the more ominous for his memories of what had transpired the last time he crossed the threshold of the Palace. He had tried to perform his daily duties without letting his mind wander towards dark places, even done his best to lead the household back into a semblance of normalcy, a pretence which would shatter into a thousand pieces the moment he looked into Isildur or Ilmarë’s eyes. But the longer this waiting period, this grey limbo between the fall and the bottom of the precipice stretched before his sight, the harder it became for him to keep his composure intact. Almost every day, he needed to escape the prying glances of others and flee to the privacy of his study, or to the porch that gave to the courtyard where he and Pharazôn had met so often in the past. There, he would give free rein to his anxiety, pacing like a caged beast, or engaging in a swift and fierce brand of sword practice as the air around him became twisted into a sea of faces, hateful and leering.

 

Back when he was a boy, practicing swordsmanship in secret in the gardens of the Temple of Melkor, he had seen those faces too. He remembered how they had vanished as he ran his makeshift sword through them, only to creep up on him in the dark as soon as he lowered his guard. He had been a scared child, determined to learn how to stand his ground against those who wanted to harm him and his family. And now, more than a hundred years later, after many campaigns against the enemies of Númenor, countless political manoeuvres and alliances, and three grandchildren who had grown to adulthood in safety and privilege, he was that child again. The faces were still waiting for him in the dark, and no matter how hard he fought, the moment that his guard was lowered he knew that the strike would come.

 

You are the leader of the Baalim-worshippers, Amandil, and everybody has distrusted your family for generations. No one will believe in your innocence, for, to them, you have been a traitor since the day you were born.

 

How ironic, he thought, that the same person who had once helped him to dispel those grisly visions should stand among them now, as one of their number. But then again, Ar Pharazôn the Golden had never been one to hesitate before pressing his blade against an unprotected flank. Even before the accursed demon began haunting his steps and whispering poison in his ear, Amandil had seen proof of just how ruthless he could be when his interests were threatened.

 

The Númenóreans who commit treason against the Sceptre are not my people. They are my enemies. And if they choose to fight me, I could not care less if they were born in the Palace Hill of Armenelos or in the farthest tribe of Harad, he had said, back when they stood in the frozen passes of Forostar before the corpses of the Lord of Sorontil and his heir. Amandil should have known back then, and a part of him had, though he had refused to listen to it. Just as he had refused to heed the warnings when he joined the Mordor expedition and tried, against all odds, to prevent what, even then, he should have realized was inevitable.

 

There is nothing you can do, that horrible mockery of a fair face laughed at him. All you ever did, you and your grandson and his foolish friend, was to do my work for me. He will never listen to anything you have to say again, and if you lift a single finger to oppose him, you will be destroyed together with your family.

 

“The ceremony will be held tomorrow in the New Temple, from midday to midnight. The King requests your presence, my lord, so you can join your voices in prayer for the welfare of the Queen and her child.”

 

Amandil nodded gravely.

 

“Tell the King that I will be there.”

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

A cunning, treacherous being like Sauron would look for weaknesses in his targets, so he could bend them more easily to his will. And what greater weakness could there be, Amandil thought as he stood close to the roaring fires of the great altar of Ar Pharazôn’s god, than to know that one’s wife and child were in danger? Ar Zimraphel had miscarried a few years ago, and there were malicious rumours claiming that there had been more instances of this in the past, even back when she was still another man’s wife. The King had never spoken of it, or acknowledged other people’s concerns that he should have an heir. Whether it was before, during, or after the Mordor campaign, he had behaved as if he was the Eternal King, instead of merely his embodiment on Earth. Gods needed no heirs, for they could not be killed nor touched by the frost of old age, and their rule could never falter.

 

Pharazôn had always claimed to believe anything that he needed others to believe. The strength of his own conviction was the touchstone upon which all his schemes and enterprises were tested, and if it was not strong enough, he would take it as a sign that they were bound to fail. But at the end of the day, he had to be aware that he was not a god, and in the bitter hours of the night, Amandil could imagine him surrendering, despite his best efforts, to the unthinkable snares of anguish and doubt.

 

Back when they were still on friendly terms, the lord of Andúnië had sometimes been allowed to catch glimpses of these struggles. But as he grew older, Pharazôn had also grown more adept at hiding what he did not wish him to see, and less ready to trust others with any sign of weakness. After the Mordor campaign, they had become strangers to each other, and even that level of honesty was no longer an option. If only Amandil had made a stronger effort to hold on to his position, if he had not surrendered all claims to their ancient friendship in that accursed moment of despair, he would have been there when Pharazôn became aware that Zimraphel’s life and the future of his line hung from a thread. And then, perhaps his old friend would have confided in him, instead of seeking reassurance in Sauron’s lies. Amandil could see it with a clarity that was all the more agonizing for its futility: Sauron must have promised the King what he so desperately needed in exchange for his trust, and now, he would go as far as to seal this pact with the demise of the White Tree.

 

You left the field to me. You surrendered, and now all you can do is watch from the sidelines, a pitiful coward unable to fight for what he believes in.

 

Trying to silence the mocking voice in his head was proving harder than ever, especially as he watched the preparations for the sacrifice in horrified fascination. Amandil had stood countless times in the obsidian hall of the Old Temple, and a thousand years would not be enough to forget every step and ritual which had been drilled into his head by the priests. And yet, this sacrifice seemed unlike those he had attended in his youth. Someone might have considered it a trick of his feverish imagination, but he could feel the smoke released by Nimloth’s hewn trunk gathering in his lungs like the poisonous air of Mordor. Back in the Old Temple, the fumes of the fire sacrifices had been sucked through ventilation openings which had been added to the architecture of the dome, in places from where it was almost impossible to see them as one stood underneath, giving the impression that the god himself was receiving his due. Only in the great sacrifices of the King’s Festival, the smoke would grow too thick to be evacuated, and some of it was dispersed among the priests and the concurrence, requiring incense and perfumes to prevent its suffocating stench from becoming too unbearable.

 

This temple, however, was different. Pharazôn had wanted to build too high, and too fast, and as a result the ventilation system had not been tested before the dome was finished. Even before the victims were burned, Amandil could already see the smoke from the altar veiling the faces of those who stood near him, and when he risked a look upwards, he realized that the paintings on the ceiling had become invisible, as if they stood under an impenetrable fog.

 

“All hail Ar Pharazôn, Favourite of Melkor, Protector of Númenor and the colonies and victor of Mordor!” a voice rung as the King walked in, clad in Ar Adunakhôr’s purple. Everybody, including Amandil, stood up to look in his direction, but none of their glances stayed on him for long. For they became too irresistibly attracted by the figure who walked two steps behind him, dark as the King was bright in his attire, as if he had wished to cast himself in the role of his shadow.

 

Sauron.

 

Ar Pharazôn climbed the steps until he stood next to the fire, and gave the sign for the first victim to be brought to him. As the ritual chants erupted around them, he made the kill with the mechanical precision he had acquired after many years as a general and a King, with no sign of anxiety betrayed by the hand that held the blade. When the dead bull’s corpse was given to the flames, however, the onslaught of dark fumes emerging from the altar seemed to give him momentary pause, and he retreated one step. For a moment, Amandil could have sworn that he had seen a flicker of fear in his countenance, but soon he had to look down himself, holding a hand before his face as his eyes teared up and his lungs were wrecked by coughing.

 

When the smoke finally dispersed, and the air became breathable again, the lord of Andúnië looked up to see that the King had moved away from the altar. He was standing on the steps now, and it was Sauron who, adopting the role of leading priest as naturally as if he had been doing it for the lifetime of a mortal, sank the sacrificial blade on the second victim’s neck. He needed no help, Amandil realized in fascination. The priests who had dragged struggling bulls and cows to the altar stood idle, for the animals grew still as soon as they approached his vicinity. No one held them in place while he slaughtered them, and no one attended him as he cut through the carcasses, gathered the blood, or threw the remains into the fire, a task for which at least four strong men would normally be required. Around him, Amandil saw that everyone was watching this in astonishment, bordering on awe. Most Númenóreans were superstitious, and for superstitious people the line between the blessed and the accursed was a thin one indeed, as he himself had learned in the mainland.

 

“Look!” someone whispered in his vicinity, momentarily breaking through the thread of the litany. Amandil blinked the cloud from his eyes, and gazed ahead. As he did so, he noticed that the heavy fumes from the dead tree and the burned victims were no longer spreading through the hall. They were shooting upwards in a column of smoke, passing through the heavy structure of the dome as if it had been made of thin air. Around him, Amandil heard more whispers and exclamations, spreading across the crowd like ripples in the surface of a pond.

 

Sauron smiled, and for a moment, Amandil had the definite impression that he was looking straight at him.

 

“Melkor has heard the King!” he shouted, his voice echoing mightily across the Temple. The murmurations rose in intensity, after a while coalescing into a new repetition of the litany, this time sung with much greater fervour than before.

 

The lord of Andúnië swallowed. Though the smoke was no longer there, and he could see clearly around him, he could still feel the stench and the suffocation inside him. He felt dirty, impure, as Yehimelkor would have said.

 

As he forced himself to look up again, he suddenly realized that the King was no longer there.

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

The sky was dark, and the midday sun lay buried under an impenetrable mass of black stormclouds, which had gathered around the Meneltarma while they stood inside the temple. As he rode past the gates of the Palace, followed at a distance by his escort, whose orderly arrangement had fallen into disarray in their frantic attempts to catch up with him, Pharazôn heard a distant, threatening rumble over his head. Back when he was young, he would have believed it to be an omen, but he could no longer afford to be distracted by idle conjectures about the capricious behaviour of the physical world. For the last days, all the speculation he had allowed his mind to harbour were the dangerous calculations of sacrifice, the difficult, tricky equivalence between the worth of what was offered and the worth of what was sought in exchange. At nights, he was unable to find an instant of repose, afraid of what could happen if his gift should be found wanting. What if the Lord of Battles pierced his thoughts to discover that, to him, the White Tree of Armenelos had been nothing but a piece of wood, that he had never stopped before it to pay his respects as Tar Palantir and his foolish courtiers had done? What if the slippery demon who had given him this counsel had misled him on purpose, to put an end to the line of the Kings of Númenor?

 

That would not be to his advantage, my love, Zimraphel had said, even as her breath grew uneven from the terrible pain. Immortal he may be, and yet he has learned, to his peril, that it is most unwise to have you for an enemy.

 

That morning, as the Palace’s very foundations shook with the sound of her screams, he had voiced his doubts before Sauron himself, to see how he would react to them. Far from being at difficulty, he had smiled, and told Pharazôn that the Lord of Battles would no doubt appreciate what he had sacrificed together with this piece of wood. And then the King had known that the creature was aware of everything that had transpired between him and the house of Andúnië.

 

“If you read my mind again, I will throw you into the fire myself”, he had growled, mounting his horse.

 

Now, as he returned once more to the very place they had ridden away from as if a horde of Orcs was chasing them, he was disturbed by the silence that greeted his ears. There were no screams, no shouts or cries; nothing but the calm of the houses of the dead under the Meneltarma. Taken by the urgent need to see for himself what had happened, he dismounted so fast that the Palace Guards from the Outer Courtyard had to leave their posts and run towards the horse before it could stomp across the beautifully kept gardens. While he walked on, he could hear the growing rumour of his escort, who had been forced to dismount before the Main Gate, joined now to the courtiers who had arrived too late to receive him. Ignoring them all, he entered the gallery that would take him to the Main Compound, where Zimraphel’s quarters were.

 

It was not long until he met a group of three ladies, each carrying what looked suspiciously like bloodied towels. When they suddenly found themselves facing him, one of them let go of a choked cry, and dropped what she was carrying.  The other two, older and more experienced, covered her blunder by stepping before her. One of them fell to her knees; the other just bowed low, and Pharazôn had the vague feeling that he was supposed to know her name.

 

“What happened?” he asked her. The sound of hurried footsteps was growing louder behind his back.

 

“The Queen is resting”, she replied, fixing the newcomers with a rather baleful glare. “She should not receive any…”

 

“And the child?” he asked with impatience, before she had even finished.

 

The lady raised her glance for a moment to meet his, then lowered it again. Her expression was so guarded, and her emotions so infuriatingly hard to read, that he was tempted to shake her.

 

“Your… son is there too, my lord King”, she said. As she spoke, a brief cloud crossed her features, but the other women kept their gazed religiously fixed upon the tiles of the floor. Though it would be the appropriate thing to do, no one congratulated him, and this was so strange that he grew more and more certain that something had happened. “It- it was a miracle.”

 

Pharazôn pushed past them and rushed towards Zimraphel’s sleeping chamber, heedless to the voices calling after him.

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

The child had been born dead.

 

It would be one thing for the women to make up such tales, their naturally vivid imagination and penchant for gossip distorting events that they had themselves witnessed. But the Healer who had been overseeing the proceedings was supposed to be among the most learned in Númenor, and he confirmed their story. As he informed Pharazôn of what had transpired, his voice was low and his eye refused to meet his, as if he was embarrassed for being forced to tell a tale he would never have believed from any other lips.

 

“He was pale, and he was not breathing. I tried to revive him but… there was no time, he did not respond, and I needed to save the Queen. The delivery had been a very dangerous ordeal for her, and there was a real possibility that she… well, that she…”

 

“I understand.” Pharazôn swallowed. Lying on the bed like a doll which had been discarded after playtime, Zimraphel looked frighteningly vulnerable. Her forehead was pale and drenched in sweat, like ivory and pearls, he thought, remembering the litany, and she had not stirred since he entered the room. He had needed to check personally that she was breathing and had a pulse, before he allowed himself to believe it.

 

“I was still… busy with her, my lord King, and the women were holding the child. Suddenly…” Now, the Healer’s cheeks were definitely a deep shade of red. “There was a noise, like the sound of thunder, and I remember that one of the women gave a sharp cry. And then the child… the child gave a great heave, and he began to wail.”

 

Pharazôn had avoided looking at him until now, but it could not be helped any longer. Angrily berating himself for his own weakness, he approached the wetnurse who was holding the silk-wrapped bundle in her arms. The way in which she extended the tips of two fingers to pull at the embroidered fabric covering his head was slow and cautious, as if he could disintegrate with the slightest touch.

 

Pharazôn could not blame her. In his life, he had seen many babies, for the soldiers of Umbar were justly renowned for their productivity, and some of their offspring lived in the Second Wall with their fathers. He did not remember ever standing this close to any of them, but he was certain that none of those children had been as small and fragile as this one. When his forehead was uncovered, he just stirred a bit, but otherwise did not move, or make the slightest noise. His skin was whiter even than Zimraphel’s, though he had not lost blood like she had, and it hung about its little body in papery folds, as if there was nothing but bones underneath it. The only thing about him that seemed to have grown as it should was the soft tuft of black hair that crowned his head.

 

Slowly, it was beginning to dawn on him. This child should be dead. He had come too early, later than his brothers and sisters, but still not enough to thrive; the late, pitiful fruit of what many would still condemn as their sinful incest. If not for the sacrifice, for Sauron’s counsel and the might of the Lord, he would be burying his heir today, and the whole Island would know that he was the sacrilegious King who could have no issue because his marriage was unholy before the eyes of the gods.

 

“Do you wish to… hold him, my lord King?” she asked.

 

Pharazôn shook his head. His battle-hardened hands could sever a writhing bull’s artery without shaking, but they would never be able to pick up such a small child without dropping, bruising, or suffocating him. To his shock, he realized that he found the very idea terrifying.

 

“He will live, will he?” he asked the healer, who was busy picking objects from the table, then putting them back with a clattering noise, apparently as unnerved as he was. “He will grow stronger.”

 

The reply was barely a mumble, and Pharazôn could not make sense of it. He walked towards the man, and stood before him with a frown.

 

“Answer!”

 

The healer paled.

 

“If he… eats and sleeps well, he will… find his strength eventually”, he obeyed with reluctance. “Until that time arrives, he should be watched day and night.”

 

Pharazôn took a deep breath, trying to assimilate this. Perhaps he had taken too many things for granted in his life, he thought, that this situation would seem so unconscionable to him. Since the day Zimraphel told him about her pregnancy, he had been feeling out of sorts, even to the point of depositing his trust on a demon. A demon who had not betrayed him, and yet it had not been enough, it still was not enough, and his mind was starting to be torn apart by the unbearable weight of it all.

 

What else did he need to do? He could ask Sauron this question, but he was not sure that he wanted to hear the answer. Vaguely, his mind could see the dark and winding path leading away from the man, from the King he had always strived to be, his very insides gnawed away by this uncertainty, by this weakness.

 

The sound of a tiny whimper, almost like the mewling of a kitten, jerked him abruptly from his thoughts. In the wetnurse’s arms, his son was stirring at last.

 

“Now, that is an encouraging sign”, the healer nodded. “I will be in the next chamber.”

 

His departing footsteps were light and fast, and Pharazôn knew that he was relieved to go. Not paying him further attention, he turned towards the woman, who was staring uncomfortably at him.

 

“What are you waiting for? Feed him!”

 

This was highly improper, and she looked anything but happy about it, but he could not care less. As if in a trance, he watched as she freed a large breast from the trappings of her attire, and began trying to manoeuvre the child into a feeding position. When his son failed repeatedly to put his mouth around the nipple, he felt himself beginning to grow impatient.

 

“Is this supposed to happen?” he asked, raising his voice above the noise of his crying. She did not look at him this time, pretending to be busy, but if she had, she might have betrayed her anger.

 

“Yes, my lord King. Sometimes the… child is nervous to have people around. Perhaps it would be better if…”

 

“Will he eat if I leave?” he cut her, his frustration increasing his vehemence. He had never felt as powerless as this.

 

Her bared chest heaved almost imperceptibly.

 

“I… I will do my best, my lord King.”

 

“That is not enough. You will feed him, or I will find another woman for the task”, he threatened, turning away to leave the room with the child’s wails following his steps.

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

When he returned to the room, the sense of purpose with which he intended to check on the child was sorely tested as he discovered that Zimraphel was awake. She was sitting on the bed, making crooning noises, and when he approached, he noticed that the baby was lying in her arms. The nurse was sitting on a small chair at the other side, still looking nervous.

 

“Zimraphel!” he exclaimed. The Queen looked up, and a wide smile, of a kind he had rarely been allowed to see before, erupted in her features. Though she still looked pale and weak, for a moment he felt the warm glow of life radiating from her.

 

“Look!” she whispered in a hoarse voice, which seemed too imperfect to be coming from her lips. Unbidden, the memory of her screams crept into his mind, momentarily distracting him from the scene unfolding before him. When he realized what she wanted him to see, however, his eyes widened in astonishment.

 

Zimraphel’s breast was uncovered, and the baby hung from it, suckling its milk in almost imperceptible, but oddly rhythmic movements. Pharazôn had never heard of any woman of the nobility, much less a Queen of Númenor, breastfeeding her own child, but all of a sudden he found himself unable to remember what the reasons for this stupid rule had been. Perhaps it had been the Elves, again, he mused idly. Them, and their obsession with turning Men into something they were not.

 

“He will feed from no woman but me” she explained, sizing the poor wetnurse with a withering glare. Then, as if she wished to drive the point home even further, she disengaged the baby from her breast, and changed its position as expertly as if she had been doing it for all her life. For the first time, Pharazôn could see his son’s eyes wide open, and his heart missed a beat when he recognized Zimraphel’s large, stirring black orbs. “Leave. You are not needed anymore.”

 

The woman did not need to be told twice: with a deep bow, she departed in a flurry of silk robes.

 

“Zimraphel, I…” he began, once they were alone. But words alone were unable to convey all that he wanted to say to her: about Sauron, about the sacrifice taking place in the Temple even as they sat in this chamber, or about their son’s miraculous deliverance from the jaws of death. About his weakness, and the terrifying uncertainty which had crept into his life never to depart again.

 

Fortunately, Zimraphel had never needed his inadequate words, or his fumbling explanations. Everything he was thinking, everything he was feeling, she already knew.

 

“Do not fear”, she said, simply. “I will protect him from everything.”

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

The ghastly succession of slaughtered and burned animals lasted all day, and after the announcement was made of the birth of Gimilzagar, Prince of the West and heir to the Númenórean Sceptre (1), six more days of sacrifices were decreed, in the New Temple as well as in the Four Great Temples and its subsidiaries. The people of Armenelos rejoiced at the news, and many took to the streets to drink and share in the general excitement, preparing for the long and lavish celebrations that would no doubt take place after the gods of Númenor had received their due. Heralds and messengers were sent to every city, territory and colony of Island and mainland, while the Palace was decorated in all magnificence to receive the first visitors who would have the privilege of gazing upon the Prince’s radiant countenance.

 

Ilmarë wished to laugh at the bitter irony of it. That such displays of empty grandeur and feigned admiration could surround a tiny, sickly looking creature who would be very lucky to reach his first begetting day, seemed to her like a joke in very poor taste. The same people who praised the royal offspring to the high heavens, and guaranteed him hundreds of years of good health and a prosperous reign, would be whispering among themselves as soon as they returned to their homes, placing bets on his survival, and wondering how Ar Pharazôn and Ar Zimraphel would deal with the succession problem if he died.

 

She could not care less, either about the succession or about the future of that sad child. As if she was attending the performance of some vapid Court play, she stood and watched as the lord of Andúnië wrestled with a congratulatory speech, and then as Anárion stepped forwards to compliment the baby and its mother in an attempt to draw attention away from Isildur and her, who had not uttered a single word since they entered the room.

 

She bit her lip, her glance unconsciously travelling towards where her eldest brother was, listening to Anárion’s claims that the boy’s features were a true mirror of his father’s glorious visage -which they were most definitely not- with an unkind frown. Back when they had been about to cross that threshold, she remembered, her steps had halted and their eyes had met, if by chance of purpose she could not be sure. And for a moment, a very short moment that stretched like eons in the burning wreck that was her mind, it was as if those months of unspoken, festering guilt and resentment had never happened, as if they were two people standing before a raging storm, with no one else to hear them or help them but each other. It had been a fleeting thought, almost like foresight, but she could not help but wonder if one day she would feel like this, and if that would be enough to forgive him.

 

“I am grateful for your kind words. You may depart with my good will now, except for the Lady Ilmarë, for I wish to speak to her in private.”

 

Taken away from her musings by the unexpected mention of her name, she raised her glance, and tried to suppress a sinking feeling in her stomach. Closest to her, her grandfather was looking quite displeased by this turn of events, but there was nothing he could do. Forcing herself to stand tall, Ilmarë watched as her kinsmen left the room one after another, leaving her alone with the Queen.

 

Ar Zimraphel was reclining on a purple couch, as if she had not recovered yet from the ordeal of the delivery. Her features, however, appeared as serene and immutable as they had ever been, and under the weight of all her pearls, sapphires, and silver steel-wrought jewellery, she still looked like the goddess of ivory who stood upon the altar of the Cave.

 

She probably thinks that she is the Goddess now, with the Child suckling from her breast, Ilmarë mused. Once upon a time, she had tried very hard to suppress her thoughts before this woman; now, she could not keep them from flowing at vertiginous speed. But your milk is not divine, and it cannot make miracles happen, Queen of Númenor.

 

“Miracles do happen, Ilmarë” she said, with a kindly smile that did not temper the piercing look of her eyes. Feeling scrutinized, Ilmarë had to fight the impulse to look away.

 

“I have something to ask of you”, the Queen continued after a brief pause. “A favour.”

 

The young woman blinked in incredulity. Until now she had been feeling hollow, almost numb, but those words awoke the embers of rage within her chest. How dare she?

 

“It concerns the child that you are carrying in your womb”, Zimraphel continued, ignoring her thoughts as well as her emotions. As she had probably predicted, Ilmarë’s anger drowned in turn, under an onslaught of fear and alarm such as she could not remember since that fateful night. “Yes, I know about it. I also know that it has no father left in this world.”

 

Like the waves came and went upon the shores of Andúnië, so did Ilmarë’s emotions swing back and forth as she stood here, confronting that woman. Her earlier rage returned, this time in full force.

 

“You know about that”, she hissed, not as a question, and neither as a simple echo of her words, but with the very foundations of her voice shaking with the strength of her hatred.

 

Zimraphel ignored this as well.

 

“Our children are linked by a very powerful fate. I have seen it”, she explained, in an almost conversational tone. “You intend to send yours with the father’s family, but it could have a much better life. Give the child to me as soon as it is born, and I will take care of h- it myself.”

 

For a moment, Ilmarë did not know what angered her more, if the Queen’s matter-of-fact demand, her callous disregard for her feelings, the fact that she felt entitled to dispose of the life of a child who was not hers, or the suspicion that she knew things about it which she did not want its own mother to know. Fear also welled up inside her chest again, a blinding, sickening terror, and yet rage prevailed in the struggle.

 

“I will not”, she hissed, fixing Ar Zimraphel with a proud glare. “I will not, and you cannot make me, for all the might of the Sceptre that you hold. I would rather kill it myself than allow you to lay a single finger on it, or your son to have anything to do with any of us.”

 

As she stood there, shaking, her chest heaving up and down with her uneven breaths, Ilmarë was certain that she had sealed her own fate and that of the child. Which would be fitting, the fell thought insinuated itself in her mind, for all three of them to be reunited in the world of shadows.

 

But the Queen merely smiled, an undefinable air of sadness wrought in the curve of her lips.

 

“I see. That is unfortunate, then. You may retire.”

 

Ilmarë did not leave, or bow. Instead, she remained rooted to the spot, her mind racked by furious thinking.

 

What was the point of this sad charade? What did Ar Zimraphel truly want? Was it to play games with her for her own twisted amusement, or was she trying to lure her into a false sense of security?

 

“Neither, Ilmarë. But things that are meant to happen will happen in their own way, and at their own time, no matter how hard we may try to force them - or prevent them.”

 

In an instinctive move, she folded her arms protectively against the womb where the fruit of her last night with Malik had been growing for the last two months.

 

“Leave my child alone.” She scowled, willing all her inner strength into her tone. “If you can look inside me, you must know that I mean what I have said. I would rather see it dead.”

 

Ar Zimraphel shook her head, still with that look of benign, infuriating sadness.

 

“It is not his fault” she said, caressing her pitiful bundle with her fingertip, and watching as it stirred feebly in her arms. “He is innocent, and so is the child who lives inside you. They are not responsible for the sins of their fathers, and we should not let them become so.”

 

Your child is only breathing because the foulest of creatures to tread upon the soil of Earth laid a spell on him. His very existence is a sin, Ilmarë thought savagely. The Queen sighed.

 

“Your death wish will not save you from the ordeal of living. Now, go.” She waved her hand in a vague gesture of dismissal. “There are still many people waiting to see me, and I am tired already. Your ugly emotions have drained me. Do not return to this Palace, for I do not wish to be confronted with them again.”

 

Ilmarë swallowed deeply. As she did so, she almost choked, taken by surprise by the dryness of her own throat. She felt vaguely nauseous, and when she lowered her head in a bow, the room spun around her. Angry at her weakness, she forced herself to hide her discomfort.

 

“As you wish, my Queen.”

---

Chapter End Notes

Notes:

 

(1) Gimilzagar was a name Tolkien made up for a character who appeared briefly in one of his Númenor drafts. If I remember correctly, he used to be an ancestor of Inzilbêth. That character has nothing to do with the one who appears here, obviously.