A Beautiful Poison by Idrils Scribe

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The Debate

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That morning, Tarlanc slept long. The prince had adamantly refused Elrond’s offer to keep vigil at his bedside. 

Elrond had heard comings and goings during the night, lamps and hasty footsteps moving in the great house’s marble halls. Messengers, it seemed, but not the one bearing the crown. Tarlanc remained crown prince and not yet king when a servant summoned Elrond to the prince’s workroom at midday.

He was led into a high chamber of white stone arches. Tall windows on two sides offered a sweeping view over the roofs of Osgiliath, the expanse of the river Anduin, onto Ithilien’s  green haze and the Mountains of Shadow in the east. 

The room contained many curious things - Tarlanc was clearly a man of learning and intellect - though Elrond wondered why  the earth sciences might interest a crown prince so deeply that he would fill his study with precious minerals.

Upon entering he paused briefly to admire a fist-sized realgar crystal. The rare mineral must be imported from some distant mine in Far Harad. It caught the morning sun bright and deep red as a ruby, but Elrond did not touch: this jewel was soft and poisonous - almost pure arsenic.

Tarlanc had amassed a stunning collection of beautiful poisons: from various marble cases gleamed the sulfuric yellow of orpiment, bright scarlet cinnabar, deep blue azurite. A bowl of mercury shimmered on a stand, scattering the sunlight in a myriad stars across the walls and ceiling.

“Sit with me, Lord.” The prince’s voice was hoarse. 

Worry leapt at Elrond’s throat, but he could not see his patient yet. Tarlanc sat hidden behind a lacquered screen. When Elrond rounded it he found him in an armchair facing the window, looking out across his capital. Then Tarlanc turned, and Elrond kept himself from gasping. 

The penicillin had failed.

Tarlanc’s abscesses had grown in the night. There was now a distinct asymmetry to his face, one eye pushed grotesquely forward by the foulness brewing behind it. A tiny, shameful sliver of disgust shivered behind Elrond’s consummate healer’s facade. How humiliating for this proud prince, to lose his fairness and his voice before the end.

Tarlanc met his eyes. “Today I must hide even from my court, lest they abandon all hope. A King of Gondor should be flawless and fair as an Elf. Anything less than perfection is a sign of the Marring.” 

Elrond knew his own appearance must be a disappointment, with his simple healers’ smock of white linen, his hands and arms wholly bare of jewelry. Even so, jealousy burned in Tarlanc’s grey eyes. Elrond possessed the one thing this Man could never have, not for all the wealth in Gondor: health. 

His Elvish blood raised him out of reach of the accursed disease. Months of laboring elbow-deep in filth and misery in the Houses of Healing left him untouched, clean and whole as a noble who rides above the mud from which his peasants dig their livelihoods. 

“So fortunate you Elves are, to be spared from death,” Tarlanc wheezed past the nodes strangling his windpipe.

“Through death, Mortals receive a Gift that shall never be for us.” 

Elrond felt like an idiot, to be citing Finrod Felagund at this poor wretch.

“A thing ceases to be a gift if forced upon the receiver. Immortality is the true gift.” Tarlanc gave Elrond a clever look from his one good eye. “You chose it for yourself.”

That was the truth, and Elrond knew not what to answer him. 

Tarlanc knew it.

“Matters are not so easy for us, your brother’s descendants. We have searched for so long. I, too, have devoted myself to this research, but thus far all my work has proven fruitless. Potable gold, mercury, the transformation of cinnabar… all in vain. Tell me,” Tarlanc demanded, “what is the true secret? Are we not kin, you and I? Will you not share?” 

Ai, he has fallen into alchemy! 

Now Elrond understood the array of poisons, the alembics and strange devices, the metallic smell filling this room.

That ancient sin of Númenor, the pointless search for an impossible substance that might render a Man immortal, transmute his very nature into that of an Elf. The Golden Elixir, the  Númenóreans used to call it, the secret of eternal youth -  as if such a thing were possible. Words straight from the mouth of Sauron the Deceiver. 

All those deluded fools ever achieved was to cut their mortal lives even shorter by mercury poisoning. And as the body withered from the poison they drank, so did the mind. The Prince was more than a little mad, it seemed.

“Sire...” Elrond began, hesitant. 

Tarlanc leant forward, pathetically eager, hanging on Elrond’s every word.

“You are of the race of Men,” Elrond continued, gentle but firm. “Even the Elder King himself has not the power to change your kindred.”

Tarlanc was unused to being refused. He breathed in, wheezing, stilling himself against his anger. “And yet eternal life can be ours. Even here, even now. I know that much. Is there then a power beyond Manwë’s?”

Who told him this!? Tarlanc’s words were blasphemy, sure, and a lie - but not wholly. 

“Whose power do you speak of, my prince?” Elrond asked.

“Those with the true interests of Gondor in mind.” 

Of course. Tarlanc was a king’s heir, the weight of responsibility drummed into him from the cradle. Elrond would comfort him to ease his passing. 

“Sire, you are mortal, but you are not irreplaceable. Rest assured that Gondor will endure.”

Words spoken as comfort, but received as a draught of poison. “Gah! You speak of that fool Tarondor?” Tarlanc wheezed with indignation, and for a moment, it seemed he might perish from the effort of his rage. “That weakling, that soft-handed loiterer! He will drop the kingdom in Umbar’s lap. Gondor needs the House of Telemnar!”

Elrond winced. He should have spoken better. Surely there were words in the Sindarin language that would ease Tarlanc into a gracious death. A better healer, a more gifted diplomat might find them. But this disease was so horrific and its devastation so thorough that Elrond had no more wit left. He could not solve this.

“Lord, I tell you,” Elrond said, his voice as grave as he could make it. “I cannot avert your death. All I may do is make it a good one. I counsel you to make your peace with it, and accept the Gift with Elros’ grace.”

Tarlanc’s lopsided face became a grotesque mask of rage. “Leave me be,” he snarled, “you traitor!”

 

‘Death was ever present, because the  Númenóreans still, as they had in their old kingdom, and so lost it, hungered after endless life unchanging. Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars.”

The Two Towers Book 2, Chapter 5: The Window on the West

 

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Chapter End Notes

Welcome back, my friends!

I hope you've enjoyed the chapter. 

Researching this one took me down a rabbit hole of historical realities so strange I could never have made them up them in a million years. 

Throughout Asia, Europe and the Middle-east, alchemy has a long and fascinating history of weird and wonderful experiments in search of the elixir of immortality. Alchemists particularly favored mercury, or arsenic in its various forms (and who knew there were so many, or that they were so pretty!). 

Turns out that poisoning oneself with toxic 'Eternal Life Elixirs' was a common cause of death for rulers, emperors and nobles for thousands of years (check the 'Chinese alchemical elixir poisoning' entry on Wikipedia, and prepare to be astonished!). That struck me as very on-brand for the Númenóreans, hence Tarlanc's peculiar interior decoration choices. The Middle-earth equivalent of horse dewormer and hydroxychoroquine. 

It's all false hope, but poor Elrond (he needs a hug, doesn't he?) can't offer any real one, and he's having a terrible time of it. 

A comment with your thoughts on the chapter would absolutely make my drizzly October day. 

See you tomorrow,
Idrils Scribe