A Beautiful Poison by Idrils Scribe

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The Gift

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Night brought more footsteps and lamps moving through the halls. Elrond had not slept, and rose from his bed’s silken opulence to watch light flicker in the gap beneath the bedroom door. Fear leapt at his throat - the great house’s night sounds were changed. A heavy, tomb-like silence had descended, and beneath its surface lurked a shapeless terror beyond words. 

He dressed quickly, and hesitated. Diplomats did not go armed in Gondor’s court, not if they valued their lives, but this night such rules had ceased to matter. Some strange and fell thing was afoot.

Beneath his clothes he strapped on a hidden harness - Elrohir’s clever design - so he might carry a long knife in secret. The knife, too, was Elrohir’s. Shaped in the Sindarin fashion, with a sinuous inlay of running horses along the blade. Elrohir insisted that Elrond carry it on this journey. 

Elrond recalled the beloved faces of his children, seeking comfort but finding little. Where were they now? The twins and Arwen departed Imladris leading a contingent of healers, to bring aid to Eriador’s stricken populace. Doubtless they faced a similar nightmare, Men and Halflings falling to the Plague like wheat before the scythe. They were beyond Elrond’s help. 

He had his own battle to fight.     

The hallway had fallen back into darkness when he stepped out, mind and body geared for a fight. Against whom, or what, he could not say. The mansion was eerily silent, save for soft creaking from the street side. Elrond knew that sound at once: the pulley for winching visitors in and out. An alchemist summoned in the night to brew some new deluded poison for Tarlanc? 

Fool! He might as well cut his own throat and be done with it.

With Elvish stealth, Elrond crept through the silent house. There was no moon this night, and the dying city lay in darkness. The hour before dawn wreathed the street side balcony in deep shadow, save where a single torch threw a leaping circle of light against the marble pillars. It painted the servants’ faces a flickering blood-red.

Elrond arrived just in time to see Tarlanc’s departing visitor climb into the basket. A man, dressed in a black hooded robe like a billowing cloud of shadow. He had a pure  Númenórean face, fine and high-cheeked - almost Elvish. Then Elrond saw the eyes, and froze. The man’s gaze was a featureless dark, deep as the Void beyond the stars. 

Elrond knew he had made no sound, with all his considerable will and potency bent on concealment. The Mortal footmen turning the winch had no idea of his presence. Even so, the stranger in the basket suddenly raised his head. He stared straight at Elrond, and smiled. 

Elrond’s fist closed about his knife hilt, though the weapon was useless against this foe. He knew that ruinous gaze. He had seen it trained on him twice before. First long ago in Lindon, when he repelled it. 

The second time, it triumphed amidst the burning ruins of Ost-in-Edhil. 

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“I must see the prince!”

For a single heartbeat, the officer posted at Tarlanc’s study looked ready to panic. He blanched beneath his mithril helm, his pupils wide with terror. But the Men who wore the Livery of Elendil were well chosen and well trained. He soon straightened his shoulders, prepared for an Elf-lord’s wrath. 

He bowed respectfully, but did not move. 

“Lord, Prince Tarlanc did not request your presence. And he does not wish to be disturbed.”

“What is your name, captain?”

“Berelach, my lord. Of the Third Company. I regret it, but I must follow my orders.”

“Then admit me, Captain Berelach,” Elrond replied, steel in his voice. “My voice is the king’s.”

Elrond raised his left hand, and released the concealment upon it. Gondor’s royal signet gleamed on his middle finger. 

Berelach stared for a moment, examining the ring’s seal. He found all in order: the white tree in blossom, surmounted by the silver crown and seven stars. King Telemnar’s parting gift would open any door in the realm for Elrond. Even this one. 

Berelach bowed, and stepped aside.

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Tarlanc stood at the window, looking out across Osgiliath at the Mountains of Shadow. The eastern sky had begun to lighten, bathing him in a strange blue haze.

“A fair view, is it not, Elrond?” 

Elrond did not reply, noting the abrupt disappearance of his honorific.

“I have always wondered at what lies to the east,” Tarlanc mused, his voice pleasant and even, as if making small talk at a feast. “Great realms and many riches. Gondor never got her proper share, with us always at war against our neighbours. Perhaps there are better ways.”

Tarlanc turned, and Elrond gasped. The prince’s skin was rosy, his face fair and straight once more. His lymph nodes had returned to their normal size and there was no trace of the suppurating craters beneath his armpits. 

Tarlanc was his old self again, but his eyes had changed. They were cold and hard. In their depths writhed a shadowy secret, an aura of terror, a flickering flame that devoured instead of lighting. 

No! This cannot be!

But Elrond knew it was so. With devastating certainty, he understood the extent of his failure, what devious scheme had unfolded under his very nose. 

Tarlanc smiled, and his smile was that of the dark stranger. 

“You carry a ring that is mine by rights, Elrond. Your loan has ended. Now return it, lest you become a thief.” 

Tarlanc held out his hand. 

Elrond shook his head and closed his fist about Telemnar’s signet ring, resisting a shameful urge to recoil from Tarlanc’s presence. 

“The King of Gondor gave me this ring,” he replied, struggling to keep his voice even. “I shall return it to none other.”

“Then hand it over.” Tarlanc smiled that horrid little smile. “My father is dead. The messenger departs the King’s House as we speak. I shall wear the crown by dawn.”

“How do you know this?” Elrond demanded.

Tarlanc drew a sharp breath, his nostrils widened. 

“I know, and that should suffice!” He turned from the window, pacing the dark study like a shadow stalking between the marble pillars. 

“You failed me Elrond, and you failed Gondor! From today, we shall look elsewhere for counsel.” 

He stood still before Elrond, radiating menace like heat from a kiln. 

“Now hand me that ring!”

Elrond had faced the Dark Lord himself, and he would not cower before a mere Mortal. He drew a deep breath, and leapt. 

“You have already received a ring this night, Tarlanc. You cannot wear both that one and your father’s. Which one will you give up?”

Tarlanc had to be deep in darkness already, because he lied effortlessly, without a shred of hesitation. 

“I know not what you mean.” 

He raised both his hands, his fingers spread. They were bare, to ordinary eyes. 

Elrond’s eyes were anything but. Maglor himself once taught him this cantrip of revealing, a Song of Power sharp and strong as a Fëanorian blade. Tarlanc was no match for it, and Elrond laid bare the horror with ease. 

There, on the Prince’s forefinger, shone a ring. A plain but well-formed band of yellow gold, doubtlessly the work of a Noldorin smith, set with a single jasper, red as blood.

Cold terror gripped Elrond’s throat. He knew that ring.

One of the Nine.

 

"Men proved easier to ensnare. Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their undoing. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thralldom of the ring that they bore and under the domination of the One, which was Sauron's."

The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age

 

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Chapter End Notes

Welcome back, everyone. 

This chapter is where things go well and truly off the rails. Tarlanc's miracle healing proves a much more terrible danger than his death could ever be.  What will Elrond do now? 

For those wondering why there's suddenly a vacant Ringwraith position: this particular ring was 'freed up' during the events of False Dawn. Sauron was holding it back for the right candidate, and Tarlanc has all of the qualifications... 

I'd love to hear what you guys think of the events in this chapter. A comment would make me a very happy scribe.

See you tomorrow, and stay spooky!

Idrils Scribe