Yávië by AdmirableMonster

Yávië

Read Yávië

The sky is covered in grey clouds, but the day is not colorless.  Swirls of orange, red, and brown paint themselves across the sky, across the earth, as the trees slowly lose their dresses and stand in stark nakedness before the chilling wind.  A pair of cloaked wanderers make their way slowly to the top of a barren hill.  They both wear dull brown, colors befitting the season, and they both walk slowly, without much apparent drive.

Reaching the top, they turn to face out towards the rolling hills covered in a riot of colors that fade away eventually into golden wheat.  Their backs are to the sea and to the high white walls of Númenor, that look grey in the grey pale light, but they can still hear the churning of the ocean waves.  This high, it is possible not to look at the second layer of walls, the cage that lies around them.

Tar-Míriel, the Queen of Númenor in name, pulls back her hood first to reveal her silver-streaked dark hair.  Her olive complexion is as sallow in this pallid light as the walls are grey, but she smiles a little as she looks out across those beautiful fields.  Those leaves floating downwards are the colors of her wife’s hair, and up here, she can pretend that Anoriel is waiting for her.  She can pretend that what she returns to is not an empty bed in a gilded cage.  Anoriel always did prefer to sleep in.

Míriel’s companion seats himself at her feet and throws back his hood as well.  His hair, which is usually close to Anoriel’s in hue, seems to have lightened; a sheen of silver-white sparkling across it brings it closer to the hue of the wheat rolling in the wind, but his eyes are as gold-red as ever.  The haunting beauty of his face seems absent, and he seems much more human than he usually does.  His face is pale and pointed, his expression almost blank.

Unwrapping the food they bundled together and brought, Míriel breaks off some bread and cheese and passes it to him.  He takes it but makes no motion to eat.  Míriel wonders why she even brought him, wonders why he agreed to come.  She often finds herself slipping away up here, but telling someone else about it is dangerous.  Although her movements are not so curtailed these days, Pharazôn’s high priest could easily revoke any privileges she has managed to claw together.

Perhaps it is because when she was making her way to the kitchens this morning, she saw him slipping out of Pharazôn’s bedchamber, saw a familiar tightness in those thin shoulders, and caught sight of red marks on his wrists that she thought she recognized as the marks of his own nails.  Foolish, she thinks, dreamily.

A soft drizzle of rain starts up.  Anoriel’s cheerful voice mocks her for her insistence in going out in all weathers.  She shivers slightly.

“Are you cold?” Tar-Mairon asks.  His voice is expressionless, nothing like the animated, charming one he puts on in Pharazôn’s presence.

Míriel was not expecting a question this—human—from him.  She has seen him spattered from head to foot in the blood of innocents, laughing.  Once again, she wonders at herself.  She ought to hate him, but all her hatred has been so thoroughly soaked up by a single target.

She shrugs.  “Chilly, I suppose.”

“Mmh.” He reaches into his robes and pulls out a leather flask, which he unstoppers and holds out to her.  In the chill of the autumn day, steam rises from it, boils up around it from one of his skinny hands.

“Thank you,” Míriel says.  She takes it and drinks.  Some small part of her wonders if it is poisoned or drugged.  She has seen the effects of the potions he gives the sacrifices.  She cannot find it in herself to care, and when it touches her lips and rolls down her throat, she tastes only the burning of cider, heavily spiced.  Apples make her think of Anoriel’s lips.  “This is—very good,” she finds herself saying.  “I’ve never tasted anything quite like this.”

“No, I imagine not.  It is a recipe a friend gave me a long time ago, and she was not of these lands, nor even human.  She loved it when the leaves fell.”  He draws his knees up to his chest.  He looks so young, this ancient being, young and oddly lost.

“My wife loved it when the leaves were falling,” Míriel says quickly and half-wishes she hadn’t.  Dreamy red-gold eyes turn to her, and one long, elegant eyebrow goes up.  He doesn’t quite smirk.

“Your wife is dead.”

“Yes.”  Míriel takes another long drink, faster this time.  It burns her throat and stomach, and she is glad.  The wind claws at her hair, and the dead leaves swirl at her feet.  “Is your friend dead?” she retorts.

“Yes.”  He drags a hand through his hair.  “She would not let me save her, the fool.”

“Could you have saved her?” Míriel asks, her voice too quiet.

He hears the question anyway.  “I’m certain I could have saved her.”  Then he smiles, and it is not a nice smile.  “Just as I could have saved your city.”

“The city endures.”

“For now.”

“What do you think will become of it?”  She has no love for this city, not anymore.

“Water,” Tar-Mairon says, tipping his head back to drink the rain.  “It is filthy, your city.  I have seen to that.  So has your king.”

“Water…?” Míriel twists around and looks at those muted white walls, thick as tree trunks, strong as iron.  “What can water do?”

“Over millennia, it can wear away the solidest rock.”  He digs his hands deep into the rich earth and brings them up with a web of thin white strands clinging to them.  “Water brings plants, brings mycelium.  Those alone could eat your city, no matter how great and powerful.”  A soft smirk dawns, and he rips the white mass apart.  Fragments rain onto the earth, and the dead leaves flutter in distress.  “I do not intend to wait that long, however.”

“Water,” Míriel muses.  The breeze whipping around her face brings the taste of salt to her lips.  Her eyes widen as she listens to the roar and pound of the waves.  “You mean the sea.”

“The sea is wild and angry and it has no patience for me or for this place.”  Tar-Mairon turns to look at her, eyes wide, his smile softening now.  “He hates me and hates my touch. As soon as he is given an excuse, he will tear it all apart. Oh—he will be sorry afterwards, for those that died.  But he will not think of that when he is given the chance.”

“You will drown us all.”

“Would you stop me?”

She shakes her head.

“I did not think so.”

The wind dies suddenly, and the sea echoes loud in their ears.  Down the hills, the trees bend in a more distant wind, and the leaves swirl in their eternal dance.

“My wife’s name was Anoriel,” Míriel says suddenly.  “What was your friend’s?”

A quicksilver glance to the side.  She has surprised him.  He does not quite know how to respond, that much is clear.  After a moment, he licks his lips.  “Narvi,” he says.  She has never heard such a tone in his voice before.

 Obscurely satisfied, Míriel sits back and wonders how long she must wait for the cleansing wave.