The Fates of Man by AdmirableMonster

The Fates of Man

Read The Fates of Man

Who is the lady with the lampblack gaze?

They call her the woman in white.

What must the ships do to find their ways?

Pray to her only by night.

—Dunlendish rhyme from after the Númenorean conquest

The city rumbled.  It was so persistent these days that Nimruzimir found it almost comforting, in a perverse kind of way.  Stillness would have seemed strange by now.  He took note of this thought and filed it away as evidence for the ways that persistent strain could warp Mannish thought.  

Passing into the front of his shop, he checked the earth-measuring device and noted several high-amplitude events from the previous night alone.  Last year there might have been months between such observations.  The city would not stand the strain much longer, he thought, then noted that his hands were trembling as well.  

Perhaps Andúnië shudders as I do.  It was, perhaps, a more fanciful thought than his wont, but he was exhausted.  He had dreamed the night before, the stores of his self-administered tonic wearing low, and he had seen her again—the lady in white, oil-black tears streaming from beneath her veil and soaking her tattered robes.  He had not meant to sleep at all.  He had been trying to keep vigil, but his charge seemed on the road to recovery nonetheless.  His fever had broken the night before, and Nimruzimir did not think the erstwhile royal physician was likely to die anymore.

He arranged the shop carefully before changing the sign to open.  The routine calmed him, even though he did not expect many customers.  Had it only been a week since Corco delivered—him?  Nimruzimir found he had to sit down again, fingers jittering across his forearms.  His breathing was so fast he thought he might faint, and that would not be ideal.

Can you care for him? the Faithful’s protector had asked, in a low voice.  In his arms, he had held the body of—the body of—

Nimruzimir still could not countenance it.  He could not understand what his life had become.  Lilóteo was Ar-Pharazôn’s Royal Physician, leader of the cabal of natural philosophers who still made allegiance to Pharazôn’s decaying regime.  It was thanks to his lack of intercession that Nimruzimir was no longer counted among their number, an action for which he felt he could now thank Lilóteo, though it had destroyed his life at the time.  Still, this made them rivals, if not enemies, and with the actions of the High Priest’s men against any who did not worship Melkor—Faithful or not, Nimruzimir thought sourly—he would have thought that Corco would consider the Royal Physician an enemy as well.

He isn’t well, Corco had said evasively, and somehow Nimruzimir had agreed to take the man in.  Somehow, Nimruzimir had spent seven days barely sleeping to coax the body of his sworn enemy out of the fevers that ravaged him.

Last night, those fevers had broken.  But the fevers of the city continued.

Mindlessly, he went through the little apothecary’s shop and straightened the jars on the shelves.  Then he did it again.  He was about to do it a third time, or perhaps shake himself out of the loop and try to tally up the inventory, when he heard the door to the backroom open and shuffling footsteps.

“Bojemoi,” rasped a voice he had not heard in years, and Nimruzimir looked up into a pair of surprisingly shrewd black eyes.  “Where the fuck am I?”

“Ah,” stammered Nimruzimir.  He had meant to have a speech planned for their first meeting, but he had not expected Lilóteo to waken so quickly.  He must have a greater resistance to the sedatives in his system than Nimruzimir had accounted for.  “You are—you are—you are in Andúnië.”

“I can tell that.”  Lilóteo staggered across to the stool behind the counter and seated himself on it, putting his head in his hands with a groan and a hiss of pain.  “How did I get here?  The last thing I remember, I was—”

“I have been informed y-y-you were removed from the innermost s-sanctum of the Black Temple.  Prior to your sacrifice.”

“How?”

Nimruzimir shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I wasn’t told.  I have—I have p-p-played my part.  I imagine C-C-Corco thinks you will be of some use to the Faithful, though I do not know why.” The last statement fell from his mouth without thought, and yet the words continued, as if he could not stop them, a flood of stoppered words that surely must drown him under their sudden volume.  “After all, I am a s-s-superior natural philosopher, despite m-my dismissal at your hands.”

A pair of craggy dark eyebrows went up.  Lilóteo went to rub his face with his hand and then grunted and spat out, “Zcerneboth’s cunt, that hurts.”

“You have been branded,” Nimruzimir told him, dispensing the information automatically.  “As are all intended s-sacrifices.  Most are not fortunate enough to survive to complain about it.  You have me to thank for that.”

“I need a drink,” grunted Lilóteo.  “Who are you, anyway?”

“I told you!”

“You made some noises about me having you dismissed,” Lilóteo shrugged.  “Doesn’t give me much to go on.  Not that it matters.”  He frowned and leaned forward, those sharp bird-bright eyes scanning intently over the earth-measuring device and its output.  “Shit, how long was I out?”

“I am Nimruzimir! I am a natural philosopher, and you had me dismissed for no reason!” Nimruzimir howled.  “How can you n-n-not know me?”

Lilóteo winced, putting a hand to his head. “Can we have this conversation later?  How long was I out?”

“No!  This is important!”

For the first time, Lilóteo’s gaze seemed to focus on him fully.  “Whatever problem you have with me, I promise you it isn’t as important as the imminent fate of the island.”

The tremor went through Nimruzimir’s hand again.  The world seemed to slew sideways underneath his feet, and for an instant his world was white—white sea-foam streaked with slick black tears leaking from a landmass covered in a white crust of ash—and he was staggering to the side.  He clutched at a nearby shelf to arrest his fall, and only barely kept himself upright.  “Six nights,” he replied.

“Six nights? Do you understand how the frequency has—”

“Yes.”  He levered his own eyes up to Lilóteo’s.  “I am no f-f-fool.  I know the lifetime of Númenor is measured in days now.”  He swallowed.  “Perhaps hours,” he mumbled, the horrible conclusion bubbling up from beneath his breast, the one he had been struggling not to think since he catalogued the instrument a few moments ago.

“Bojemoi,” Lilóteo muttered again.  “Six nights.  From this, I would have thought a month, at least.  Six nights.”

“It has increased immeasurably,” Nimruzimir said tightly.  “B-B-But what is there to be d-d-done?  There is no way out of the city in such a short time.”  It will be cleansed by tears until there are none left to mourn it. 

“People must be evacuated,” Lilóteo said tiredly.  There were great dark circles beneath his eyes.  “I have been saying this for days.”

“Which is wh-wh-why, I imagine, that the f-f-fool of a High Priest took you as a s-sacrifice.”  

Lilóteo laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “The High Priest is no fool, but madness lurks in his eyes.  He knows exactly what he’s doing.  The king, now, the king is a fool.”

“He…knows?” Nimruzimir echoed faintly.  There were rumbling murmurs about Tar-Mairon, even in the slums of Andúnië.  The Faithful called him heretic. The King’s Men praised his name.  The folk that Nimruzimir talked to most often day to day called him a witch, and Nimruzimir, when he thought of him, had assumed he served the pleasure of the king, desiring to expand the Empire as so many did.  “What do you mean, he knows?”

Lilóteo shook his head and laughed slightly.  “He knows that he leads Númenor to her destruction.  There is no question of it.”

“Why?”

Shrug. “Does it matter?”

Hardly, by now.  Nimruzimir paced back and forth.  “There is no time.  I have no way of r-reaching the Faithful on such short notice.  My messenger sparrow w-would not make it in time.”

“Why send a sparrow?  Haven’t the Faithful any farstones?”

“Yes, but I do not,” Nimruzimir retorted.  “Nor have I any way of reaching one.  This district is hardly wealthy enough for such a thing.  And the King’s Men—”

“Of course, of course.” He rose unsteadily and paced back and forth, wincing as he did so.  He looked old and thin and frail, his black hair shot with grey, his dark skin sallow and dull, bagging beneath the eyes.  “We must do something.”

“Why are you looking at me?” Nimruzimir asked plaintively, as those dark eyes caught his.  

“Why shouldn’t I?”

Nimruzimir groped for the words, finally settling on, “We are, we are n-n-natural enemies.”

A queer taut thing seemed to stretch between them, and he could suddenly not look away from those deep black eyes.  The world seemed to hold its breath.  The lady in white turned her seeping gaze towards him.  His own breath caught as well.  The feeling was of an unstable equilibrium, a ball perfectly balanced on the point of a hill.  Any moment now Lilóteo would respond with a denial, and it would all fall apart.  

“And you think that matters now, man?”  

Nimruzimir took a half-step back.  His patient should not have been able to move so quickly.  His breath smelled of stale medicine, and he was a towering pillar of energy, of rage.  

“People are going to die!” roared Lilóteo.  “What should any of the rest of it matter?  Whatever trespasses have done against you, they will not matter in a few hours!  They do not matter now!”  His hand was harsh on Nimruzimir’s shoulder.  “People are going to die,” he repeated, more quietly.  “And it will be my fault.”

He seemed to come to himself then, drawing a deep, shuddering breath and stepping back, pulling his hand away as if Nimruzimir’s shoulder were a hot stove. “Ah, damn.  Damn, damn, damn.”  He staggered across the room again and sank back onto the stool.  “Can I save no one?” he muttered, this time more to himself than to Nimruzimir.

Nimruzimir did not know how to feel.  He ought to feel triumphant at his enemy’s defeat, but he ought then never to have healed him at all.  Lilóteo had cleaved too close to the King’s Men and paid the price for it, while he, Nimruzimir—well, he was going to die, too, he thought numbly.  And so was everyone else.  The Faithful had ships.  They could take some folk to safety, if they were warned.  But they could not be warned, unless a farsight stone could be found.

It was a puzzle, he found himself thinking, his jumbled emotions receding like restless waves from the shore.  How might a farsight stone be obtained?  How might some of the folk in the district be warned and gathered to safety by the Faithful?  If they had but one stone, they could reach Corco or Elendil, and his message sparrow could warn at least some of the nearby dwellers.  They could reach the dock.  It was more of a chance than otherwise.  But farsight stones were of Elvish make, forbidden.  They would need someone who was hiding one.

A smuggler, perhaps.  Nimruzimir rarely asked many questions about the purveyors who supplied him with his herbs, but it would be surprising if all of them obtained their goods with complete legality.  He shut his eyes, letting his mind drift across those he knew.  There must be a clue in one of those faces.  He spun his way through memory after memory—those he knew to have good relationships with the King’s Men he discarded.

He wanted a purveyor of eclectic goods.  Someone who got him the most unusual items.  Someone who wore, perhaps, the teardrop symbol of the forbidden goddess who haunted Nimruzimir’s dreams—yes.  That was it.

He opened his eyes.  “I have an idea.”

* * *

He had feared he would not find her, the ragged merchant on the corner.  He had feared that she would have fled or packed up shop for the day to go and drink herself into a stupor in a tavern he did not know.  But she was there, as she often was, her makeshift tarpaulin shielding her head from the steady rain he had not known was falling until they had stepped outside.

“Where are we going?” Lilóteo kept asking him.

“To do as you said,” Nimruzimir finally snapped at him.  “You cannot expect me to explain further while anyone could overhear us.”

Lark looked up as he approached, tugging her red veil into place, her eyes shining with the same queer light that Nimruzimir always forgot when he was not looking into them.  Her gaze slid from Nimruzimir to his companion, and her mouth turned to the side in an expression he did not understand.

“Why have you come?” she asked, flexing her right hand in a nervous gesture.  “There is nothing for you here.”  

“The city is dying,” Nimruzimir responded tersely.  “We have days or less before—before—” He swallowed.  “The earth will shake itself apart.  We must—warn someone.”

She sat back on her heels.  “Days?  I knew it was getting bad, but I—”

“There is no question,” Lilóteo put in.  “The frequency of tremors has grown in the past six days more than I would have expected it in a month.”

“And what are you doing here, Royal Physician?”

“Ah, I-I-I think you are m-mistaken,” Nimruzimir tried.  

Lark laughed.  “No, we know each other rather well,” she said dryly.  “I told you they would turn on you, you know.”

Shrug.  When Lilóteo’s voice came out, it was thick, the consonants not quite what Nimruzimir had expected.  “Yes, you fucking told me,” he growled.  “I’ve paid enough of a price, I think.”  One hand went to his shoulder, and Lark’s eyes widened.

“He took you?” she asked in a low voice.  “You are alive?”

“There isn’t time for this,” Lilóteo snarled.

“We must know if you have access to a farstone,” Nimruzimir broke in.

Lilóteo gave him an incredulous look.  “Now you are willing to say it aloud?”

“Be quiet, you fools.”  She clenched her hand again.  “Days.  Damn.”

“Perhaps hours,” Nimruzimir said heavily.

“Hours?  Valar, I am the fool.  I should have—” Rapidly, she began to gather her goods up around her.  “No, none of this matters if it is so dire.  Yes, I can get you—” She cocked her head to one side, as if listening.  “Fuck.  Here.”  She fumbled a key out from a pouch at her belt and pressed it into Nimruzimir’s hand.  “Take this.  It will let you into my rooms.  Third floor of Seaside Street.”

“What?”

“The King’s Men, they’re coming,” Lark snarked.  From beneath the cushion she had been sitting cross-legged on, she produced a small stringed instrument.  “I’ll hold them off.  You must go now.”

“The King’s—you can’t—”

“Go!”

“Come on!” Lilóteo shouted.  “Come on, there’s no time, come on!”  Somehow, Nimruzimir was running.  Fear swept through him.  He thought of the injuries he had seen on Lilóteo.  Perhaps he would not survive long enough even to see the island’s end.  There was something else, some thought that niggled at the back of his brain as they ran, but he could not get it to come into focus beneath the roaring terror that flooded his every thought.

Waves pound in his mind.  Black oil spills slick across the water.  The factories where they burned that oil to send sizzling power throughout the island—he sees the ocean’s jaws crack them open and suck out the juices like the marrow of bones.  The oil drifts downwards through the clear green-blue tears of the lady, diffusing in lazy curls like blood.  Leviathans stir in those depths, older than the lord of the Black Temple, and more terrible.  Below even them lurks the fire, and if the water should meet it—if the water should meet it—

Someone was calling his name.  He came back to himself with a start to find that he was standing with the key that Lark had given him in the lock of the ramshackle hallway of an old building whose powered lamps were humming with the lightning running through them.

“It will be a pyre,” Nimruzimir blurted.

“What?” Lilóteo asked, sounding cross.  “Come on, we need to hurry.” 

They stumbled into a cluster of rooms filled with stuff.  There was no other word for it.  It was not in any particular order, either, heaped here and there upon tables and soft seats and cushions, here shards of bone or shell, there a spillage of paper or books, in yet another corner a heap of dried herbs.  At least, Nimruzimir thought, there appeared to be only two connected rooms.  Still, he stood gawking helplessly for a moment.

“Where do we even start?”

“Well, you take one end, and I’ll take the other.”

There was certainly something he was forgetting, but there was equally certainly no time for him to figure out what it was.  After a moment more of frustrated overwhelm, he turned to the left and began to sift through a pile of old carved runes.

Lilóteo was more efficient, despite the fact that he was obviously exhausted and his injuries must be paining him.  But then, Nimruzimir’s head had begun aching only a few moments after they arrived, and it was only becoming worse as he moved from heap to heap of dusty knick-knacks.  He stumbled miserably back and forth, going into a sneezing fit every so often, and thinking distractedly that this whole mess comprised a surprising number of objects he would have loved to take his time examining.

But there is no time, she whispers.  No, there is no time.

He almost burned his hand on it when he found it, finally; it had been sitting near a powered heating element and whatever material it was made from was an excellent conductor.  He yelped and backpedaled, almost falling, and shifted another mound of papers, and then, there it was—the farstone.

“Here,” he choked out.  “Here, I’ve found it.”

“Thank Bieleboth,” came his companion’s answer.  

He regained his balance and went to nudge it out of its small nook with one foot.  It resisted, but eventually rolled into the center of the floor, and he knelt before it immediately.

It was made of a heavy, smooth material, perhaps metallic, which would explain its affinity for heat, but there was some queer light glittering in its depths that did not seem to be quite accounted for by reflection.

“You can reach the Faithful with this, yes?” Lilóteo knelt at his side.  “Ach.  Fuck, that hurts.”

“I, I.  Surely you can use it?”  He had never actually used one.

“It’ll be better from you.  They can’t have been certain that I would support them.”

“You were to be sacrificed!” 

“Yeah, well, His Eminence is making a sacrifice of this whole damn island.  That means less than the fact you’ve been working with them for some time.”

“But I—” He wanted to push it away.  He wanted to say this was not his responsibility.  But there was no one else.  And was this not what he had dreamed of?  His old enemy asking for his help?

“I-I-I w-w-will try.”

“Good man,” Lilóteo said, clapping him on the shoulder, looking at him with that too-intense gaze over his thick beard.  Nimruzimir trembled.

“We are still s-sworn enemies,” he said weakly.

He got a wry chuckle.  “I’d think you might consider that getting you kicked out of that rats’ nest—however I did it—was something of a favor.”

“It was not fair,” Nimruzimir retorted hotly. He opened his mouth to say more and shut it again.  There was no time for this.  With a sigh, he turned back to the farstone, checked that it had cooled enough to hold, and then put both his hands on it and focused upon it, willing it to find Corco or another of the Faithful.

For too long, nothing seemed to happen.  Then something like a great hand reached in and squeezed at his mind.  Nimruzimir thought he cried out, but he could not be certain.  The headache blossomed outward until he thought his skull might crack open; his mind seemed to be occupied with roaring flames.  Images flashed before his eyes: a vast white mountain, shining brighter than the sun; a tree with shimmering golden leaves rustling in the wind; a lake so still it seemed to made of flat glass.  Then the vision shuddered and snapped into clarity, showing him Corco seated beside Elendil, the two of them apparently in the midst of a heated conversation.

“Corco,” Nimruzimir said urgently, but he was not certain if he really said the words or only thought them.  Either way, Corco started violently, and his eyes turned to Nimruzimir.

“Nimruzimir.  How did you come by a farstone?”

“That is not important.  There is very little time.  The Royal Physician and I have determined that the lifespan of Númenor is at its end.”

“What?” Elendil’s voice sounded.  “What do you mean?”

“Have you felt the tremors of the earth?”

“Yes,” Corco said.  “They’ve grown stronger.”

“They have grown as strong in the past six days as they ought to have done in a month or more.  This is the end, m-m-my lords.  It may already be too late.”

The vision rippled across, another spear of pain jolting through his skull.

“—ruzimir?—hear me?” he heard.  (Sobbing rises in his ears, a wailing keening noise like a wounded animal.)

“I can hear you,” he breathed.  (Is it the wailing of a woman or only the wind?)

“Where are you?  Wait.  Someone—come for—” (Why is it so loud?)

Through numb lips he got out what he thought was the location of the little set of rooms.  (The leviathan stirs.  What has he forgotten?)

“—come for—”

His tonic, he realizes, with a sudden chilly clarity.  He has forgotten his medicine.

The wooden boards dissolve away beneath his feet, and he falls into inky blue, his mouth filled with the choking taste of oil-tainted saltwater.  

* * *

Everything in nature is in balance, and so too with the fates of Man.

The fates of Man: the Lady in White sends some to Angband, most to the plains of Arvalin, and a lucky few to dwell in Valmar.  Does balance necessitate some numerical relationship between how many are sent to which plane of existence?  Or is it all meaningless, a nonsensical useless desperate impulse to force order onto a chaotic universe?

Númenor bleeds

oil in the water

she shivers in her fever; her death convulsions will come soon. It is terminal.  The patient is terminal.

I am sorry.

These are the fates of Men, and they are in balance.  What of the fate of an entire kingdom?  What is there beneath the Sun that can balance that?  The fire waits, the lady in red beneath the waves.  When two halves make a whole, it will all ignite, and it will all drown.

He falls 

…

…

…

down…

It is dark and suffocating in the depths, but the fire boils there, lurking, waiting, seeping upwards, terribly close to the surface now.  Númenor convulses.

Númenor convulses, and Nimruzimir convulses with her.

* * *

It was dark and cold.  His bones were rumbling and aching. He lay crumpled in an uncomfortable position on his side, his head pillowed on something soft.  Someone had thrown a ragged blanket over his shoulders.  He shivered and coughed, his mouth tasting foul.

He had not taken his tonic in about thirty hours, he realized slowly.  No wonder the fevers had come.

“You’re awake,” Lilóteo’s rasping voice said quietly from the dimness.  “What was that?  I’ve never seen anything so violent.”

“They called it foresight, when I was a child,” Nimruzimir said exhaustedly.  His head was cradled in the other man’s lap.  How odd.  “When I came to Númenor, my mother told me that I must hide it, for foresight was a mark of the Faithful.  I said I had no wish for such things, in any case.”  He laughed hollowly.  “Here I am, anyway.”

“Here you are.”  Lilóteo shook his head and frowned.  “If it takes you like that, how is it that you have kept it hidden?”

“It usually does not.  I left my tonic in my rooms behind the apothecary.”

“Ah.  Will you be able to brew yourself more in the coming days?”  

He appreciated not having to explain to Lilóteo the fact that it would be quite impossible to retrieve under the current circumstances.  “The materials are not too difficult to obtain.  If I live that long.”  He groaned, sitting up slowly, and risked a look around.

No light seeped from the hallway outside, and the rooms were cold, but outside it was a red dawn, the ominous bloody glow spilling across the clouds building at the horizon.  A closer look showed him that black smoke was wafting slowly up from the city in several places, and the room was shaking and groaning.

“The lightning lines have been cut.”

“For several hours, now.”  Lilóteo produced a small metal flask from somewhere inside the threadbare robes that Nimruzimir had dressed him in hours ago.  “Want a drink?”

“Oh dear.”  Nimruzimir started to shake his head, then shrugged.  “Then it is—it is—”

“The final fever,” Lilóteo said, sounding almost gentle, and Nimruzimir understood how he had been the Royal Physician.  Had he spoken to his patients thus?  To the queen?

He sagged back against the wall.  “And no one has c-c-come.”  His teeth were starting to chatter, and he drew his knees into his chest.  “We are g-g-going to die.”

“Probably.  Sorry I wasted all your trouble.”  He sounded flippant, but when Nimruzimir looked up, both of Lilóteo’s wiry hands were trembling as he stared at the flask he held.  He worked his jaw back and forth.  “So now might be a good time for you to tell me what the fuck I did to you.”

It did seem as if there might not be another opportunity.  Nimruzimir’s mind skittered around, trying to find something else to hold onto and failing.  Finally, he sighed and spoke.  “F-F-Fifteen years ago, I w-w-was accused of c-c-complicity in the queen’s attempted escape.”

Those black eyes cleared and shot up to his face.  “Oh shit,” breathed Lilóteo.  “That was you.”

“Oh, now you remember me.  You would not even l-l-look at me.”

He got a dry and rather mirthless chuckle.  “Well, no.  I wouldn’t have.  I was using you as a scapegoat.”

“What.”

Lilóteo tipped his head back and took a long drink from his flask, then raised one black eyebrow at him.  “Who do you think was trying to help the queen escape?”

It was as if two lightning-lines had—for years—been disconnected, and Lilóteo had reached out and in one sentence brought them together.  All the pieces fell into place; the wretched confused howl in Nimruzimir’s mind—but why I never did anything wrong why would you do this to me—went quiet, finally.

“Oh,” he breathed.  “Oh.”

Lilóteo grunted and put his head in his hands. “So I screwed you out of your place, and then you went and saved my life.  Why bother?”

He had asked himself the same question, though not as often as he might have expected.  He drew his knees into his chest and shrugged.“C-C-Corco said to care for you.”

“You could have ignored him.”  Lilóteo leaned forward.  “I’m no fool.  I know how sick I was.  You must have barely rested this whole week past.  You didn’t just try, you tried your best.”

Wretchedly, Nimruzimir looked back and forth.  He felt as if he were a rat in a trap.  He did not owe this man anything else, least of all an explanation.  But the feeling burned a hole deep inside him, two lightning-lines unconnected once again.  He reached out and snatched the flask from Lilóteo’s loose grip and took a quick swallow to give himself a moment to gather his thoughts.  Finally, he looked up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.  “Because what you did to me was not fair, but it would not have been any fairer for you to die of torture by some madman who calls himself a priest.”  The connection, the explanation, soothed that ache deep inside him again, even though it seemed so useless, all of it, so petty, so meaningless, before what they faced now.

Lilóteo stared at him, then shook his head.  “Huh,” he said.  “Damn.  If I’d asked for your help fifteen years ago, I wonder if we’d have been able to get her out for real.”  He stretched, wincing and rotating his neck back and forth.  “Well, since you’re so forthcoming, one more question—”  His hands caught at the robes, smoothing them down.  “You must have seen all of me, when you were tending me.  That didn’t even enter into your calculations?”

Blinking at him in confusion, Nimruzimir tried to understand what he could possibly mean.  “Eh?”

“You did see everything?” One craggy eyebrow went up.

Oh.  He rolled his eyes.  “Well, that would not have caused me any particular confusion,” he retorted waspishly.  “I am the same.”

There was a long pause.  Then Lilóteo tipped his head back and roared with laughter.  Nimruzimir blinked, tipped his head to one side—and found himself giggling as well, a giggle that turned into a full-on guffaw.  “Everything is in balance,” he gasped out, crawling across the shaking floorboards to kneel beside Lilóteo.  “So too with the fates of Man.  Well, I suppose it is true.”

Running a hand through his grey-streaked tumble of black hair, Lilóteo looked up at him from beneath it, that bird-bright gaze as intense as it had been the very first time Nimruzimir had ever seen it.  Then he reached out with the same hand and took Nimruzimir’s, holding it tightly.  “That sounds like a quotation.  What is it?”

“Oh, it is an old Dunlendish saying.  I am from Dunlending—my father was Númenorean, but my m-mother—” Awkwardly, he paused.  He had never found the right way to discuss this in polite conversation, though admittedly he was not certain if this qualified.

Lilóteo only nodded.  “I’m of the Druédain.  You probably knew that.”

“I think I had heard it said.”

“Is that all they say?”

“Hmmm?”

“Of the fates of Men.  It seems to be a matter of some concern in Númenor—and to us, currently.”

“Ah.”  Nimruzimir looked about them.  The tremors seemed to be intensifying, but he could not be certain.  He wished, abruptly, that he had his earth-measuring device.  Suddenly, though he had never thought of himself as a man who needed others, he could not bear to be alone, and he scooted across the floor until his body was pressed against Lilóteo’s, side against side.  “No, it is not all they say, but I never knew if I believed any of it.”

That is all right, whispers the woman in white.  I do not need you to believe in me, Nimruzimir.

“What do they say, in Dunlending?”  There was something terrible in those dark eyes.  “I never believed what my folk said either.  I left them, for Númenor, thinking that they would be less foolish, but they were not.”  He glanced up.  “Worse, possibly.  Though perhaps my people would not have fled, either.  I suppose I cannot call the High Priest a Númenorean.”

“Is he not?”

“He is a captive of war.  A slave.”

“A slave?” This was not something Nimruzimir had ever heard.  “But he has such power.”

Shrug.  “If you’re going to keep someone as a slave, you shouldn’t give them the means to topple an Empire.  I said that and Tar-Míriel agreed, but that was many years ago.  I don’t think she cares anymore.  Pharazôn, well, he believes he use the Black Temple for his own ends.  He’s wrong, of course.”

He put an arm around Nimruzimir’s shoulders, and it seemed queerly natural for Nimruzimir to slump against him, resting his head sideways on the other man’s shoulder.  He sighed.  The red glow of dawn was fading, but there was still red reflected against the clouds.  Parts of Andúnië taking fire, probably.

“What do they say in Dunlending of the fates of Man?  They say the lady in white takes their souls upon their deaths.  They say she weeps over each one in turn, but that she still decides whether to send them to the eternal torment of Angband, the plains of Arvalen, or the eternal bliss of Valmar.  I have never liked the idea of eternal anything.”

“Mmm.  Things must change, or they wither.  But perhaps the gods know best.”  He shook his head.  “I don’t know if I believe in any of it.”

“Nor I.  But I am afraid, all the s-s-same.”

“So am I.”  

Nimruzimir leaned into him, and to his surprise, he was enfolded in an awkward and boney embrace.  “Well,” he whispered.  “I-I-I s-s-suppose if I am g-g-going to d-d-die, y-you are not the, the worst c-companion.”

“I wish I’d known you long ago,” muttered Lilóteo.  “Well, too late now.”

The building creaked and groaned as the ground buckled beneath.  They leaned into one another’s warmth with a sigh, breath mingling.  Nimruzimir found that he was trembling.  “D-Do not think that this m-means we are n-no longer sworn enemies,” he murmured.

A chuckle.  “I would not dream of it.”

Somehow, it seemed oddly natural to put a hand on Lilóteo’s shoulder and lean forward.  It seemed oddly natural for their lips to meet.  Nimruzimir had never done such a thing before, but that was no problem.  He could hardly make much of an ass of himself if they were about to die.  Lilóteo made no complaint, in any case.  He put a hand on Nimruzimir’s waist and drew him closer, deepening the kiss.

A whooshing noise and a thump from outside the building made Nimruzimir look up muzzily.  The window opened, and Corco leaned in.  “Hurry!” he called.  “I’m sorry it took me so long!”

“What,” Nimruzimir said stupidly, but Lilóteo was already getting to his feet, putting a hand underneath his elbow and pulling him upright as well.  

“That’s either the worst timing I’ve ever heard of, or the best,” he called to Corco, towing Nimruzimir along.  “How did you get here?”

Nimruzimir’s gaze went from Corco’s apologetic expression and past him, out to the little oil-powered balloon that was straining against its rope.  “Oh.  The Eagle,” he said.  “How clever of you to bring that, Corco.”  It had been the design of the king’s natural philosophers to begin with, but Nimruzimir had helped the Faithful modify it to be smaller and lighter and more fuel-efficient.

“I hope I am in time,” Corco said.

“We must certainly l-leave immediately,” Nimruzimir replied, and he and Lilóteo clambered out the window and into the basket with Corco’s help.  “Th-The others?”

“We’re evacuating as many as we can.  You didn’t give us the best directions, which is why I’m so late.  Fortunately your friend Lark told us where to look.”

He undid the anchor, and the Eagle leaped skyward.  The rumbling in Nimruzimir’s bones ought to have diminished when he left the earth, but it did not.  He recalled that he still had not had his tonic, and he clutched at Lilóteo’s hand.

“She is dying,” he whispered.  “Númenor is dying.”

“You’re all right,” Lilóteo said roughly.  “We’re getting out of here.”

His vision cracks across, and he knows they have the time.  It will be hours yet, before the vents open and the tears of the white lady meet the rage of the red.  Before the waters meet the fires and the heat turns all to vapor instantly.  The energy released will tear the island limb from limb.  The Black Temple is an aberration, but it will sink beneath the waves with everything else.  He seems to hear laughter and see a pair of mad gold-red eyes staring into his.  You see my vengeance, Pharazôn?  Do you regret now what you have done?  I do not—I never have.  

The lord in blue will judge the truth of it, if anyone does, and Nimruzimir thinks he will find that the last is a lie.

He opened his eyes with a jerk to find the tremors gone, the Eagle’s deck bucking beneath him.  Lilóteo was holding his head again.

“Not so bad, this time,” he said critically.  “The convulsions only lasted a few minutes.  But you must tell me how to make that tonic of yours.”

“I will,” croaked Nimruzimir.  After all, they had time now.  Númenor was dying, but they were not.  Perhaps, in time, sworn enemies might even become sworn friends.

---

Chapter End Notes

Corco - Corvo Attano (Corvo means "raven" and "Corco" means "crow" because sometimes Jirt was not very creative.)

Nimruzimir - Piero Joplin (Nimruzimir means "elf-stone" and Piero means "stone")

Lilóteo - Anton Sokolov (Lilóteo means "covered in flowers" and although we do not know what "Anton" means, a false back-etymology links it to the Greek "anthus," flower.  Since Lilóteo is a name that the character takes on himself, he has deliberately used a mistranslation of it. Shhhh, I know Lilóteo is Quenya and by rights probably ought to be Adunaic, given his stature at the Númenorean court, but it worked too well, and I am sure there's an explanation, but it isn't relevant to the fic at hand.)