The Thousand Stories by herenortherenearnorfar

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Ûrîbêth and the Sun Woman

The first of hopefully seven stories for Atani week (of varying relevance to the prompts). They're in non-linear order, so for reference this one is set around 1729 SA.

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She was very strange, the sole woman among the delegation of the Dark Folk sent to Lebenin. 

The towns masters and guild leaders had made it clear that establishing trade routes with Harad and the other lands beyond Mordor was of the utmost priority, to them if not to the proper lords of the West. Tensions between whatever petty-king they had in their land and the Queen in Armenelos were still high. There had been some war a few decades back, when Ûrîbêth was still a toddling child and the evil creature who ruled in the land between the mountains had been sent running by the heir's fleets. 

It was an interesting bit of history, spoke very well to the pride and power of Númenor, but it didn’t change the fact that this Dark Lord held sway over most of the trading tribes who connected the east and west. Ûrîbêth’s people— who did not exactly swear to the Sea-kings but were born of venturers and wandering folk— could only afford to go without diplomatic allies for so long. They’d managed for the last few years, keeping up contacts with the usual caravans out of the west, selling their wares and acting as a vital intermediary between the shy elves of the rivers and the equally jumpy eastern men. 

The Dark Lord’s power only grew unfortunately, as did the population of their little unofficial haven. They could only make it so far without a proper trade agreement. 

So, with great reluctance, the mayor had made contact with the forces of evil and invited them to the negotiating table. 

Ûrîbêth wasn’t supposed to be there, at least not at first. All the trade heads and town officials had apparently assumed that the negotiations would be conducted in Nernean, a common tongue shared by the people of the east; their Adûnaic so to speak. It wasn’t until the well appointed caravan of fine horses and well-dressed men (and one, mysterious woman) arrived that it became clear that the people of Mordor intended to conduct their business in their more official language. The Black Speech, it was called. Few people of Númenorean descent were willing to learn it, for it was deemed foul and dangerously magical. 

Panicked and unwilling to request a translator from their guests, the duly elected leaders of Lebenin had hastily searched for anyone in town fluent in the reviled language. Most of the potential candidates were leagues away— it was trading season and linguists were much needed among the wagon trains. Ûrîbêth would have been with them, sailing down the muddy plains to Um-bar with her father’s company, if only she weren’t several months into her confinement. 

She’d been hesitant when the messenger had come to her mother-in-law’s house, asking after Azûlkhô’s daughter. The role promised little reward and a good deal of risk. But the children of the Sea had always been good to her family— even if they viewed travelers and foreigners (her father and mother respectively) with a good deal of suspicion— and she did count herself among their number. There was a duty here; one she was not about to shirk.

The days spent in the palace of the mayor were a blur. The words of the Black Speech, learned as a child from a retainer of her father in between more commonly spoken, less formal eastern languages, were heavy on her tongue and more than once she thought she caught the representatives of Mordor smiling at her turns of phrase. At least there was no cause to worry about dialect. What was it Khâzim had always said? “There is only one true speech and it cannot be changed by men.” Luckily the ‘one true speech’, at least as she had learned it, was decently equipped to discuss trade deals.

Surrounded by the splendour of Númenor’s prodigal sons and daughters, and of the wondrous empire to the east, it was easy to become dizzied and distracted. Rather than try to note all the little expressions, reactions, machinations, Ûrîbêth tried to keep her attention focused on her work. Still, no matter how hard she worked to empty her mind of naught but words, her eyes kept wandering to the woman. How quiet she was, but how she would occasionally nod at one of her companions in response to an amenable set of terms. How responsive they were when she tugged them away from the negotiation table for a little chat. When she didn’t show up one day Ûrîbêth grew concerned; then by afternoon she was back, with a veil of local lace pinned in her hair and her eyes full of mischief. The part of Ûrîbêth that was pointedly not noticing things realized that after that the Mordor folk had a much crisper idea of exactly what goods they could squeeze out of their new partners. 

Eventually the talks were concluded. No one walked away happy, but both parties seemed largely content with the easing of tensions. There would be proper caravans now, and protected status for traders who wished to travel eastwards (and vice-versa). Fine elven goods, spices, delicate fabrics, and books of wisdom would now be more abundant than ever.

There was a feast when all was said and done, and Ûrîbêth was invited. Against her mother-in-law’s advice, she decided to go. It was cruel to waste another man’s generosity, and now that she was out of the first three months she was allowed to have wine again. There would be sweets, and perhaps even dancing, and as the daughter of two traders she had every reason to represent her company to such illustrious guests. 

The night seemed rather disappointing at first. The wine turned her stomach and the usually sweet summer fruits tasted sour. The Mordor delegation was keeping to itself, perhaps tired after so long in a strange land. Furthermore her own kinsmen, though grateful, did not seem overjoyed to socialize with a young fishwife. 

She settled on one of the low couches, all the rage in Andúnië these days it was said, and picked apart shellfish morosely. The sudden brush of cloth against her shoulder made her inhale so sharply that a bit of shrimp briefly lodged in her airway. When the blur cleared from her eyes she tilted her head up to see the woman looking down at her, clearly worried. 

“Are you well?” she asked; blessedly in Nernean. 

Ûrîbêth nodded, thrown by the sudden attention on her. 

“May I sit?” the woman asked, one hand moving smoothly to hover over the surface of the couch next to Ûrîbêth. 

“Yes,” she croaked, and hastily took a sip of wine to soothe her tight throat. 

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” the woman continued, and there was an accent to her words that Ûrîbêth couldn’t place. Unlike the Black Speech, the language of the place Númenor called Nurn changed freely There were a thousand little variations, depending on region and mother tongue. It had spread as the dark power had, and had adapted as that kingdom had grown. Ûrîbêth had heard dozens of dialects in her years. None had quite been like the one she heard now. 

That shouldn’t have been surprising. The woman was clearly from very far away— south if Ûrîbêth knew her geography. She had a teak complexion and although her dark curls were pulled into a braided crown tight around her scalp the tightness of the coils where they were loosed to skip down her back reminded Ûrîbêth of a mule driver in one of the mountain faring trade parties who had told children of the waystation stories of her magical homeland when evening fell. 

And she was rich, possibly the richest of those sent to treat with Lebenin, though men sometimes wore wealth differently than women. Gold weighed down her neck and hands, and a fortune in huge, smooth pearls were set in her earrings. 

This awareness of who she was speaking with, of the potential importance of the middle-aged lady perched elegantly next to her, settled over Ûrîbêth in an instant, before the woman could even finish speaking. 

“It is simply that there are too many men here,” she said, seemingly not caring that she was sharing a seat with a slightly grubby girl whose husband was out at sea, on a boat that wasn’t even his own. “It does grow tiresome.”

Ûrîbêth did her best to shake off the unease, without shaking off all good sense too. “Yes, it does, my lady.”

The woman waved her hand and laughed merrily. “None of that. You elect people here, don’t you, like they do in Leshkerru? Let’s have a very equitable evening. I’m Cytise, it’s a delight to finally meet you.”

We only elect rich people from good families , Ûrîbêth thought despairingly. Then she remembered that no one cared about propriety when strangers were involved. It was the principle her mother, an otherwise all too respectable Rhûnish matron, regularly used to do scandalous independent business. It would certainly extend to some frank conversation with an Easterling queen. 

She relaxed. “All right then, Cytise.” It was a very Nernean name, enough to make her suspect it was a translation, “I’m Ûrîbêth.”

“And are you from here or are you a traveller like we are? I noticed you spoke the One Speech, where your leaders did not.” Merry as her eyes were, and as light as her tone made the conversation feel, there was something prying about the substance of the question. Cytise from Mordor clearly didn’t content herself with comment on the food and weather. 

“I’m from here,” Ûrîbêth braced for the surprise, that such a slight creature could be of the same people as the High Men. “I just look a bit different because my mother was from the northeast.”

The Númenorean ideal was to be tall as a pine tree, dark and clear as the night, and with eyes like the winter sea. Ûrîbêth was short and brown-eyed, with hair that turned an unlucky shade of red under the sun. Red like blood, the old ladies whispered, red like cursed old elves whose names Ûrîbêth could never remember. 

It was a small matter, but an annoying one. Scant few of the descendants of the mariners here still had enough sea-blood to live more than a hundred and twenty years, and many had parents or spouses from the coastal people. If it weren’t for the red, and her mother’s very visible status as an outsider, it was entirely possible no one would ever comment. As it was, however…. 

It ate at her sometimes. 

Cytise seemed to notice the bitterness playing on Ûrîbêth’s face. She tilted her head and then, softly, apologized. 

“It wasn’t my wish to prod at you, I simply noticed your sunspots. They’re beautiful, you should be proud if your mother gave them to you.”

Blushing, Ûrîbêth’s hand shot to her cheek, as if she could feel the freckles scattered there. They were numerous and seemed to multiply by the year. 

“Thank you,” she replied automatically. Then, wanting to keep the conversation going, wanting to entertain this kind, clever stranger, she added, “I was named after the sun maiden, you know? We call her Urwendi and my name means Sun-Knowing, more or less.” Despite a modest gift when it came to translating the languages of others, her own had always proven more opaque to Ûrîbêth. Perhaps it was because she had learned it when she was too young to grasp any of the rules. 

Cytise tucked up her feet next to her, a familiar and all too intimate motion, and chuckled. 

“Oh, I’ve heard your people’s mythologies. I do not think they are quite accurate.”

That rankled at Ûrîbêth’s national pride. They had their tales straight from the elves of the elder days, and the servants-of-Eru who had shaped the world. Of course they were correct!

“You don’t know that."

The older woman’s hand came to rest on her shoulder, a warm weight. “Oh? Then tell me how you think the sun woman came to burn?”

This was easy, Ûrîbêth knew the tale by heart. “Urwendi was the protector of the great golden tree in the blessed land. She fought to defend it, to keep it from being cast into shadow, but could not defeat the monster who came to ruin it. All she could do was burn him.”

Around them the feast hall was quieter. It was hard to say when the majority of the partygoers had left, only obvious that they weren’t there anymore. Perhaps they’d finally put aside their differences and gone out on one of the small skiffs, or gone up to the roof to smoke . It was a clear night and the stars could be wonderful this time of year. If all went well the mayor would even be able to restrain himself from referring to the king in the east as a “dark lord of perfidy” within earshot of their guests. 

Ûrîbêth went on with the story, her voice feeling very thin in the still room. “For her bravery, she was entrusted with the last drop of the tree’s light and told to take it where spiders and shadows could never reach. So she forged a boat of gold with her own fiery hands and navigated it into the sky. There she and the light could never be harmed again, and though others have tried to mimic her success they have never sailed so high or so far. And that’s why we have the sun.”

Her hand was so close to Cytise’s knee, and it was easy to touch her, lightly, like she would with one of her friends. Were they friends now?

Certainly Cytise seemed to think so, because she smiled again and brushed some of . Ûrîbêth’s wayward curls out of her face. “That’s a version of it.”

“Tell me yours,” Ûrîbêth demanded. She’d never had much interest in other versions of creation stories before— after all, they were just stories compared to Númenor’s unquestionable natural histories, but now she had to know. Maybe she just wanted to hear Cytise talk more. Her voice was enchanting, high and sweet and sharply pronounced, every consonant a kiss. 

“If you insist. It is a very different story, though it shares some ideas.” Here she paused like a marketplace storyteller, dragging it out, pulling the audience in. Ûrîbêth found herself leaning closer, until she was even more in Cytise’s inescapable orbit. 

“When the first humans were made the world was dark and cold. There was no light, no sun, no moon, and the people suffered.” That didn’t sound right to Ûrîbêth. Humans had been born with the sun, not before it, but she had asked for this story, from a guest and a lady no less. She wasn’t about to contradict it. 

“The gods were cruel and did not care. Only a few rebels tried to help the humans, but they were quickly caught up fighting the demons of the Western Lands and could not send aid.” That seemed wrong too, and furthermore it seemed similar to some dusty bits of history in the back of Ûrîbêth’s mind. She had never been a scholar, however, and she put the concern aside. 

“The humans began to die of cold and starvation and finally, finally, one of the cruel gods spoke up. It was a woman wreathed in flames, bright as the dawn yet somehow of little renown among her own people. She said that they ought to send help, that they ought to aid the poor new creatures. She was ignored.”

This was very close to blasphemy. Ûrîbêth knew with a sinking feeling that her in-laws, and even her own unobservant parents, wouldn’t approve. But she was entranced, if not convinced, by the soft way Cytise told the tale, by the pressure of her touch and the way the deep lines around her eyes creased in concentration as she organized her thoughts. 

“The fragile, dying humans were too far for this one woman to reach on her own. Instead she took another path. She stole a thousand yards of golden fabric from her mistress and snuck past the guards at the secret door to the outer air, the door that the gods used to hang the stars and carve the silver moon.  When she was outside in the darkness amid the silver she began to wrap herself in cloth. She wrapped and wrapped, until she was more a shrouded corpse than a human, and then she kept wrapping, surrounding herself in layers like a moth’s cocoon.”

Listening with an increasing sense of dread, Ûrîbêth clutched at the hand on her arm for reassurance. “Finally there was nothing but a huge ball of golden thread, stitched and sewn and doubled over, with no hint of the woman inside. And when that was done she used her great power to set the gold aflame.”

“Was she alright?” Ûrîbêth asked, horrified. 

Cytise nodded. “Of course, it takes more than that to kill an immortal. Still, she is forever trapped in the outer air, in her prison of melting gold. Her flames and her sacrifice saved the first humans, however, and for that we are forever grateful.”

“Well, I’m glad she didn’t die.” Ûrîbêth took a long draught of wine. “That was a good story. Not the sort I’d tell to my children,” her arm curled protectively over her belly, “But good all the same.”

“Yours was as well,” Cytise graciously allowed. “I will remember it. You speak of children, will this be your first?”

It must have been the gesture, Ûrîbêth knew she wasn’t showing yet. Still, she was grateful for the change of subject. “Yes. It’s all very new to me, and all the old women have so many ideas. Do you have children?”

She was old enough to have half a dozen, if Ûrîbêth was any judge. Though her hair didn’t show any grey her face was well lined. Forty, maybe fifty, the distinctions were hard with middle men.

“No, only a nephew, and it is not the same thing. My position has kept me too busy for a family.” It wasn’t exactly regret in her voice. Regret implied too much sorrow. There was however a sort of bitterness, as if some aspect of her life were not to her liking. 

“What do you do?” The question had been on Ûrîbêth’s mind for days. Now, with wine making her pliable, it was impossible to keep from asking it. 

“Diplomacy. I am I diplomat serving at the pleasure of the Eye.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

Cytise leaned in resting a hand on Ûrîbêth’s knee. The metal of her jewelry was hot. “I’m here because I asked to be, and I am allowed some frivolities. I think it was a good choice, since I got to meet you.”

Then the mayor and his guests burst in again, talking very fast and loud about the good mead. Feeling unreasonably guilty, Ûrîbêth drew back, and, with a slight pause, Cytise also settled back into her seat. 

Still, she didn’t move her hand. 

She was very strange, the woman from Mordor, but not frightening . Quite the opposite, in fact.