Nature Teaches Beasts to Know Their Friends by BloodwingBlackbird

Nature Teaches Beasts to Know Their Friends

Read Nature Teaches Beasts to Know Their Friends

Pray you, who does the wolf love?

Her father kept dogs, great hunting hounds with velvet-soft ears. She had played with them when she was a child, and they were gentle with her, this strange upright pup. More than once she had fallen asleep with them in a pile before the fire, only to wake up in the blue dark of her own bed, the coolness of her pillow beneath her cheek.

There was one dog, though, a sleek hound with a beautiful, graceful head, and eyes as dark as the sea at night. She had paced, back and forth, back and forth, until she wore a path in the ground. Sometimes she would run the path, over and over, a panicked circle around their yard. Her father had wanted to breed her: that beautiful coat, those strong legs, all the years and lineage turned out in one beautiful creature, but something had gone wrong somewhere within her. 

Her world wasn’t small. She was a king’s hound, and the king’s hounds had all that a dog could want, or all that a king thought that a dog could want, at least. Still, maybe her world was too small for her, for she raged at its edges.

Míriel had loved her, in the way that children love beautiful things, in the way that children love sad things, and she had not understood why the grooms kept the hound apart. 

She had taken a bit of pork from her dinner, had saved it tight in her little hand, and then had sneaked her way out to the yard, because she was a princess and she didn’t understand that there might be creatures in the world who did not love her.

She still bore the scars on her hand, on her right forearm. They weren’t as bad as they could have been. She had been lucky, her father had said, that the dog didn’t bite Míriel’s face. She had bitten one of the grooms when he had run, shouting, to pull the dog off of her, and old Almiron had worn the frightening scars of his cheek until he died.

She didn’t see the hound again after that.

Míriel got older and she grew to understand that there were creatures other than dogs who would not love her, but that they would not all be so gracious as to stop at biting her hand. 

She thinks of that hound now as she paces her halls, her world smaller than it has any right to be. She wears paths in the carpet beneath her feet and wonders, if someone comes close and offers her a bit of meat, will she be brave enough to take it? Or will she let the fear have her and bite and bite and bite?

It is on one such perambulation that she first meets Sauron. 

She does not frequent these halls. There is too much chance that she will meet her husband among these council rooms and audience chambers. They should have been hers, filled with her courtiers, her nobles, her people. It should have been her wisdom, her strong hand guiding her people. These halls are a reminder, each step yet another portion of territory that she has ceded to Ar-Pharazôn’s invasion. She’d had neither the wisdom nor the strength to fortify herself against him. How dare she think that she could have ruled?

But sometimes she cannot keep herself away.

A door opens and she startles to stillness, as if she is the invader. She can hear her husband’s laugh from behind the door, long and loud and as honest as she’s ever heard from him.

Then Sauron slides from the doorway, a smile dancing about his full lips. He is beautiful, as she has heard, even in the modest scholar’s robes that he wears. It is an act. Sauron is playing a role, this humble, helpful little god that her husband has brought into their home, tame now, his teeth firmly within his lips. Míriel is no fool and maybe she’s only a chained hound, but she knows a wolf when she smells one.

His smile doesn’t slide away when he sees her, but it grows sharp.

“My lady.” He bows and maybe there is mockery in it, and maybe there is only her own shame.

“I thought you were a prisoner.”

“And so I am. Your king is a very kind jailer.” His eyes flash to hers and they both know it for a lie.

“You don’t look like one.”

He steps into her space, far closer than he should, close enough that she can see the gold that catches the light at the back of his eyes.

“Neither do you, my Lady.” 

He does not wait to be dismissed.

She is shivering when she reaches her chambers, a fluttering feeling inside her lungs that shakes every breath loose and makes her lightheaded. 

“My Lady?”

Nilûphêr emerges from the bedchamber, arms full of blankets. She clearly hadn’t expected Míriel back so quickly, but she hands the bedding off to a page and comes swiftly to her side.

“Get this off of me,” Míriel whispers, already tugging at the pins that secure the mass of braids, the coronet of golden leaves, the silken snood, so much work for an hour’s outing, and it will only have to be done again for supper. The very thought leaves her exhausted, and she yanks roughly at a comb, long strands of dark hair coming away in its golden teeth.

“Here, sit, my lady, please.” Nilûphêr guides her to a chair, her hands cool and steady, gentle on her feverish brow, calm and methodical as her fingers weave their way through the braids, and the shuddering tightness in Míriel’s chest begins to ease.

“Thank you.” The words rasp, like she’s been breathing smoke.

“Of course.” Nilûphêr hesitates, then clears her throat, catching herself back from the edge of familiarity. “My lady. Would you like to rest? The bed is already made.”

Míriel is tired, sick to death of being treated like something fragile, so no, she does not wish to rest, she wishes to crawl out of her skin, to shed it, leave it dry and empty behind her like the little lizards that sunbathe on the southern beaches. 

“I met Sauron,” she says, instead.

The fingers in her hair freeze. “Oh?” She sets a jeweled comb on the table, its clatter suddenly loud, and Míriel misses the comfort of her hands. “You seem troubled.”

“Perhaps I am,” she answers, “But I cannot say why.”

 

Nilûphêr prepares a bath for her and loosens all the laces of her gown, eyes downcast as she helps free her from the heavy silks. Once Míriel is settled in the bath, she moves to leave.

“Sit with me, please.” If the request surprises Nilûphêr, it surprises Míriel even more.

“My lady.” She pauses, turns in a circle, as if she isn’t certain what to do, her arms full of a ridiculous queen’s ridiculous finery. She seems very young at that moment, even though she is of an age with Míriel. But, then, Míriel herself is older than she seems, old blood, beating in an old heart, bone-deep weariness pumping through her veins. 

“Oh, leave it,” Míriel waves her arm. “I don’t like that one anyway.” Their eyes meet through the steam rising from the bath and Nilûphêr blushes.

“Let me at least hang it up.”

Míriel sighs and sinks down into the water, near hot enough to scald. She plans to stay here until it goes cold. “If you must. Bring me some water when you return.”

Nilûphêr does not stop at water; she returns with a full tray, a silver ewer of water, fresh with mint leaves, already sweating from the humidity of the bath, a bowl of ruby bright berries, a carafe of wine. She hasn’t been with Míriel for long. Her predecessor, a young woman prone to emotional displays, had found herself with child. Míriel may have spent every day of the last decade cursing herself for a fool, and she may have despised her husband with her every sinew, but fear makes one watchful, and she knew who her husband was with, and she knew who attended him, and it had taken no great wisdom to divine why her handmaiden was summoned so often to her husband’s rooms. 

Fool she may be, but she doesn’t care to be made a fool of.  

Besides, the whipping the maid got before her dismissal was far gentler than whatever Pharazôn would have done had he learned of the child.

Ar-Pharazôn the Golden has no heir. Ar-Pharazôn the Golden needs no heir, for Ar-Pharazôn the Golden will never die, or so he declares.

Míriel wishes for his death with an intensity that frightens her.

The wine is ice-cold and so sweet it makes her teeth hurt. She swirls her free hand through the water, making waves in the bath, stirring the steam above. Nilûphêr sits on a bench near the wall, hands busy with mending.

“You are from Andúnië, is that right?”

“Rómenna, my Lady.”

“But from Andúnië before that.” She doesn’t need to make it a question. It would be a dangerous one in any case. She watches her maid to see if she’s frightened.

To her credit, Nilûphêr does not look away, but she twists the little medal that she wears on a leather thong about her neck. There’s an image of a tree stamped into the metal, usually hidden in the bodice of Nilûphêr’s high-necked dresses, but even cautious as one of the Faithful must be in the King’s house, she has slipped. 

“Yes, my Lady.”

“How long has it been since you’ve visited your family?”

The mention of her family frightens her more. She bites her lip and Míriel can see that she’s pulling hard enough on the medal that the cord is digging into the skin at the back of her neck. 

“You do not have to fear me,” she feels a smile tug at her lips. “Maybe you’re too young to remember, but my name is no more Ar-Zimraphel than yours is Nilûphêr, I’d wager. What do you call yourself, in your heart?”

“Calithil,” she whispers, her eyes bright. “And we haven’t forgotten your name, either, my Lady Tar-Míriel.”

“Well, then, we know each other now. So tell me, how long has it been since you’ve visited your family?”

 

 

Ar-Pharazôn is Míriel’s first husband, yes, but it is not true to say that this is her first marriage, at least, not in the ways that matter.

The one she loved had been another child of Andúnië, daughter of a merchant. Her name was Anoriel, and she’d had rare dark eyes that sparkled like the sea at night, and hair that would burnish to copper in the sun. When Míriel was with her, they would walk the shores, and Míriel would sink her hands into that hair, hot from the sun, and she would kiss the salt from Anoriel’s lips and they would pass a sigh, one to the other.

Anoriel was a poet. Beneath the cool shadows of the cliffs, they would lie tangled together, watching the sea, Míriel’s head cradled on her soft breast while Anoriel sang to her of simple things, gentle things, of hands and of lips and of loving.

Míriel was a king’s heir, and a future king is lucky if he may choose his queen to his liking, but can a queen choose her own queen? Such a thing was unheard of in all the long years of the world. Small wonder that after her father had claimed the scepter, that after the King’s Men had been quelled, the proposal had come from Amandil, still Lord of Andúnië, even if exiled to Rómenna. It would have served them both, Amandil’s ships at the throne’s command, the throne’s support publicly returned to the Faithful. Maybe things would have been different if Míriel and Elendil had wed.

She had fond memories of her cousin, of childhood games, of rides along the coast, of lying on the sun-warmed planks of one of his father’s ships, while the sails filled above them and the sea sang around them. But she loved another, had pledged herself to another, had shared a bed and a life and a household with Anoriel for years already. 

She thinks of it often, now, of her father’s face, drawn and weary as he sat beside her and held her hand and begged her to consider it.

“He is a good man,” he had said. “He will not force your love. Do your duty, my daughter, join with him in friendship, bear a child in joy.”

“And what of she whom I love?” Míriel had asked, looking out of the window, to where Anoriel walked in the gardens.

“Speak to Elendil. Maybe he will understand, maybe you may keep her close.”

“Close.” Míriel laughed. “Close and secret, I’m certain.” She shook her head. “No. I will not.”

“Ah, daughter,” Tar-Palantir smiled, though his eyes looked far away. “I am proud of you. I would change the law for you, if I could.”

She patted his hand. “You cannot,” she said, “not without the full support of all the lords. Which I had just ensured you cannot have. I shall be queen,” she said, still young enough to lift her chin at him. “And when I am queen, I shall marry the one I love. Until then, your blessing will suffice.”

He had laughed at that, and held her tight, begging her forgiveness with a voice thick with tears, for he was besieged and could do no more for her.

“My daughter shall marry only if she wishes it,” Tar-Palantir had decreed, and perhaps he had believed that would be enough.

Then Tar-Palantir died.

Before he was even decently buried, Míriel was taken, wed, renamed, first in something like privacy, only Pharazôn and his chosen lords there to witness. Later she stood beside him, silver to Pharazôn’s gold, lead paint hiding the marks on her face, crowned and wed in one ceremony. They had stood together beneath Nimloth and there Ar-Zimraphel, Míriel no longer, had performed her first and last act as Queen of Númenor. 

She declared Anoriel’s father a traitor, leader of a conspiracy, denounced him and his associates, and sentenced them all to death. The evidence was false, but what did it matter? Ar-Pharazôn the Golden was merciful, she had declared, bruises tugging her lips and garbling her words, and their families would be exiled to Umbar. She had not wept, not then, not even when Pharazôn had made her witness the executions, and not when Anoriel had screamed her name from across the square. She had thought she had no tears left, until the message came that Anoriel had been taken with a fever in the passage, and died before she reached Middle Earth.

 

She stays in the bath too long, sipping the wine, asking Calithil questions so that she can listen to her soft voice. She’s hesitant at first, but Míriel persuades her to pour herself a cup of the wine, and asks her to say more about the gulls that built a nest in their thatch. It’s not an especially humorous story, just a simple one of childhood mischief and brothers with more curiosity than wits, but Calithil laughs at the memory, and maybe the wine and heat have gone to her head, because Míriel does as well, her eyes held fast to the shadows beneath Calithil’s jaw, the length of her neck. She sinks down in the bath until only her eyes are above the water.

“Aren’t you cold?” Calithil asks, once the silence has become heavy.

“A bit.” Míriel wiggles her toes, cool water swirling around them at the movement. “What is the time?”

Calithil gives a start and darts into the next room to look out the window. She returns tense. “I’m sorry, my Lady, We -- it’s near time for supper. I need to braid your hair.”

Míriel stands, a bit unsteady; the bath is slippery with the oil, making the water bead on her skin, cool silvery rivers parting and flowing together as they run down her body. Calithil wets her lips and comes to wrap her in a soft robe. Her head feels strange and heavy.

“I’m sorry,” she says, leaning on Calithil’s arm. “The heat -- the wine.”

“My Lady?”

Míriel shakes her head. “I’m not ill, only tired,” she says, then something wild takes hold of her, something that cares nothing for consequences. “But you can tell them I am. Tell them I’m feeling poorly and wish to keep to my rooms tonight.”

Calithil smiles at her and nods, not pulling away when Míriel keeps hold of her arm.

It is a short-lived rebellion. It always is.

Ar-Pharazôn sends for her after dinner, and poor Calithil has to braid her hair after all. 

Sometimes Míriel thinks that she has learned nothing at all, but at least she has learned that her punishments only grow worse if she tries to hide from them. She may be a rabbit-hearted stray, but she won’t tuck her tail between her legs and shiver for all to see. She will look her husband in the face and wonder if he sees his death when he looks back.

 

 

“Write to Elendil,” Calithil says. “He is a good man.”

Míriel is tired of hearing this. 

“They will support you,” Calithil insists, forgetting her place entirely. “They will understand that the new laws are not your doing, that you suffer as much under him as they do.”

Míriel looks at her, “I threw away the support of the lords of Andúnië when I refused Elendil’s suit.” 

Calithil doesn’t quail. “Elendil is a man grown, wed for love, with a fine, strong son. If he was angry once, I’m certain that he is no longer.”

A month later, she suggests that Calithil visit her family, gives her coins for the trip. Calithil schools a plain young girl in whatever arts she uses to cajole Míriel out of bed and into the gold-shot gowns that her husband prefers, while Míriel frets over a letter to her cousin. Calithil swears that she will find a way to deliver it.

In two months, she returns, and Míriel is so giddy with relief that she throws her arms about Calithil’s neck and breathes in the hot, summer sun smell of her hair. Calithil laughs and pats at her arms until she lets go, until they both remember who they are, what they are to each other, but she still lets Míriel lean close so she can whisper in her ear that her brother has agreed to take her letters to the lords of Andúnië. 

And so Míriel writes letters, and she sends them quietly, but not secretly. Bland missives flow from her quill, and she sends them to many: belated gratitude to hosts, musings on the birds that throng her gardens. She sends letters that even her husband would find it hard to challenge. She prepares a response in case he should ask, rehearses it over and over in her head, plans every ebb and flow of the argument as if she is directing troops in battle, but the challenge never comes and she is not sure if he has not noticed, or if he has, but truly does not care.

Within each stack, though, there is one letter, addressed to one of Calithil’s brothers in Rómenna, for delivery to her cousin Elendil. She is careful in what she writes, careful to give no hint of the letter’s true destination, careful that they read as a bland account of her life, with all the horrors stripped away, the plea for aid, for support, hidden beneath layer upon layer of subterfuge. There is no hint of sedition within, and she only hopes that the first hand-delivered letter, the one that gives meaning to every other letter she writes to Elendil, was delivered as promised. It is all a gamble, though. Míriel does not know Calithil’s brother, only trusts that he will do as promised because she trusts Calithil, and Míriel’s heart pounds for hours after every batch of letters is sent, and she doesn’t understand why until she looks at Calithil and remembers that she is not the only one who will be punished.

She receives responses of course, to the letters that are in truth as banal as they seem, overbearing and over-familiar marriage advice from a distant aunt, a veritable treatise on the migratory habits of the shore birds from a childhood friend of her mother’s. She receives responses from everyone except Elendil. Whether that means that he is not writing back, or she is not receiving his responses, Míriel has no way of knowing.

She does not allow herself to consider that he isn’t receiving them at all.

 

Ar-Pharazôn is distracted, for he is building a temple, a gift for his pet god. He is still taken with his new toy, and for Míriel it is a reprieve. She moves her walks to the gardens and tells herself that it is freedom of a sort, that she has chosen not to pace her own halls like a ghost. Some days it feels as if she has ceded her power too easily. Some days she forgets how it was, how he had moved in the shadows even before her father’s death. There had been well placed scandals, a public shaming here, whispers of perversion there, always touching those with ties to her father, to the Faithful. Every individual accusation sat heavy on all their shoulders, all painted with the same brush in the end. The false conspiracy that killed Anoriel’s father was only the final stroke in a masterpiece that Pharazôn had planned for decades. She blames herself all the more for having been beaten before she ever knew there was a threat.

The years pass, and Míriel watches, shunted ever more firmly away from even the meager influence she’d once had. Pharazôn introduces new laws and revives old ones. Amandil is formally stripped of his titles. Míriel writes to Elendil again and tries to tell him that she is sorry.

She sees Sauron sometimes, in the hallways, across the gardens. He has abandoned his simple scholar’s robes and wears more gold than the king, with rings upon every finger. He is beautiful, dazzling, but hard to look at, impossible to focus on, like the sun reflected on the sea. Construction progresses on his temple, and Míriel finds it hard to imagine what god someone so radiant would deign to worship. They do not speak to each other, not then, but she can feel Sauron watching her, eyes as bright and heavy as gold on her skin. She shivers and looks away.

 

There is a feeling in the air as the temple rises, a tension stretched thin, like the skin over a boil. Míriel knows now what will be invoked there. It should be no surprise to hear Sauron call upon the Darkness, to decry the gods of the west, to claim that man’s mortality is a punishment, the only weapon that their gods, weak and petty, can wield against them, and yet: it is a shock, a blasphemy that makes Míriel feel queasy, all the more so because it echoes within the hidden chambers of her own heart.

It has been long years since Míriel has believed. Her father had tried to instill a measure of his faith in his daughter, had hoped that Míriel would lead Númenor back to the old ways, that she would be the one to call out with friendship across the sea, that she would welcome the firstborn back to their shores, that the Mountain would echo with their prayers and the eagles once more greet them with blessing. Whatever faith survived her father’s death had perished on the boat with Anoriel. She isn’t certain what she believes in anymore.

Calithil believes. Fervently, sincerely, and kindly. Míriel sometimes catches her with one of the old prayers on her lips, making no sound, but the cadence of her breathing, the shape of the words enough to give her away. Míriel wonders if she prays all the harder for her queen’s lost faith.

Calithil believes in her lords as well and begs Míriel to believe in them, to trust that they will support her, will help her reclaim the throne that should have been hers. Elendil has not answered her letters.

 

Míriel wakes in the night to the sound of dogs. She has been dreaming of the hound again, but the barking does not stop when she opens her eyes. There are men, shouting, the gold and flickering light of torches beyond her window. The palace is like a wasp’s nest, dug up by a skunk.

She sees Calithil first, lamplight catching her wide eyes in the little alcove where she sleeps. 

“Good evening, Ar-Zimraphel,” says Sauron. His voice is pleasant, soft, almost like a song, and Míriel’s heart is hammering so hard she thinks it will shake her from her bed.

Míriel somehow hears Calithil’s gasp over the crack of her husband’s hand on her cheek. She tastes blood where she bit her lip. At least Pharazôn isn’t wearing all of his rings. 

“Do you know what you’ve done?” Pharazôn is in front of her, his fist clenched in her face as if he wants to remind her that he’s doing her a great favor by not hitting her again.

Míriel’s thoughts flee. She wishes she did not fear him so, wishes she could stand up and rage back at him. She does not even need that much courage. It would be enough to look him in the eye and simply say that she was sleeping. But that is too much for her, she is frozen like a rabbit beneath a hawk, neither brave nor foolish enough to bite.

“Do you know what I learned?” Pharazôn takes her jaw in his hand, and shakes her. “I learned that my wife, and you are my wife, are you not? I learned that my wife has betrayed me, that she thinks that she may write to my enemies, to an old suitor, no less. She thinks that she may sell my secrets, sell my throne to a usurper. She thinks that she will make me a cuckold in my own home, that she will make me a fool.” He forces her chin up, his face close to hers. His breath is wine-sour and she tries to flinch back and he grabs tighter, his fingers hard on her bruised cheek, her lips crushed against her teeth. She looks past him to Sauron, watching with something most like curiosity, the way a child might taunt a puppy, just to see what it might do. 

He catches her gaze, gives her a small nod, then glances to the side, to Calithil’s alcove. She is crouched there, her hand at her neck, probably clutching her charm, murmuring a prayer. Calithil is brave and faithful and Míriel thinks that she will do something very foolish if Míriel doesn’t beat her to it. She is right.

“Please, Your Highness! It was because of me,” Calithil says, her hands clenched upon her thighs, the whites of her eyes bright in the shadows. 

Sauron smiles and Míriel closes her eyes.

“You were right,” says Pharazôn, releasing Míriel.

Sauron walks over to the alcove. 

“But what was because of you, dear one?” he asks, brushing a dark curl back from Calithil’s face. She shrinks away from him, shuddering, then squares her jaw and looks past him at Míriel. She has seen the trap too late and the apology in her eyes is too much to bear.

“She was writing on my behalf. I - I left a sweetheart in Rómenna. She was going to ask for a place for me with her cousin. That’s all. I swear it!”

Pharazôn laughs at that. “What a disappointment for you, my jewel.” He gives Míriel’s chin another shake, then slides his hand around to grasp the back of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair. “So my wife has been writing friendly letters to traitors and I am to believe it mere coincidence that those same traitors have turned thief and have come into my home?”

Sauron reaches into the breast of his robe and Míriel’s stomach plunges when she sees the sheaf of letters, near every one that she has sent over the past years. Have any of her missives reached their destination? She stares into those golden eyes and wonders how long he has been waiting for this revelation. Has it even occurred to Pharazôn to wonder why his pet chose this moment? Míriel is angry, and for a moment it overtakes the fear. She knows why; she knows that he was waiting for her to grow desperate enough to reveal herself, to speak plainly to her cousin, waiting for her to stumble into undeniable treason. But she hasn’t done so.

She looks away from him, her eyes rolling back, trying to see her husband. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

He pulls her hair until she gasps.

Sauron answers. “Someone has broken into the court and stolen a fruit from the Tree.”

Míriel wants to laugh. “That is all?”

“The Court of the Tree is forbidden.”

“What makes you believe this had anything to do with me?”

“The thief escaped,” says Pharazôn. “The guards who saw him say it was Isildur, son of Elendil.”

Míriel remembers him as a boy, skinny arms and legs and ears that stuck out too far. She had only seen him the once, shuffling awkwardly behind his father and grandfather on the day that Pharazôn called the Lord of Andúnië before the court to strip him of his title. It has been years since then, but Míriel can only picture the gangly youth.  

“What will you do to him?”

“Nothing. He escaped, but he will die soon enough, if not from the wounds the guards dealt him, then from his own fool heart if he continues to defy me.”

Something flickers in Sauron’s gaze and Míriel thinks that maybe the wizard doesn’t always get his way.

Pharazôn goes on, “He isn’t worth my time. His family holds enough support to make trouble for me. You, though? A man cannot have a snake in his own home, can he?”

“You have read my letters. Was there any treason there?”

“Writing them is betrayal enough,” says Sauron but, again, he watches Calithil instead.

Please, no, Míriel thinks.

“I wrote to him,” says Calithil, her voice quavering. “I wrote to him and I told him that you said you would cut down Nimloth. I begged him to stop you.” She moves to clutch her charm again and Sauron sees it. He moves faster than she can and jerks it from her neck. It dangles from his fingers, flashing sharp in the lamplight as he holds it up.

“What is it?”

“It is as you suspected, your Highness.” His robes sigh like the coils of a snake as he comes close to where Pharazôn still holds Míriel. The icon of the tree winks silver in his palm.

“She did not know,” whispers Calithil.

At that, Pharazôn releases her and storms across the room, shoulders rolled forward like a bull. He is showing his age, but he is still strong, and Calithil cries out when he hits her.

Míriel is shaking so hard she cannot breathe, but if she does not move now, she may never move again, so she stands before she can think better of it. She does not feel her feet on the floor, does not see Sauron put himself in her way, does not even see what he does, but it makes her fall, with a blinding pain like lightning behind her eyes.

“Be still, little fool.” It’s a voice without voice, a voice that comes from the vibration of her own bones, and she couldn’t move even if she wanted to.

“Please,” Míriel whispers.

Sauron slides his eyes sideways at her, then back to the alcove.

“They are felling the tree now,” he says. “Isildur gained nothing with his theft. The fruit will wither, and the line of his fathers will die with him. I will feed Nimloth to the fire in the temple of Melkor, and the Dark will hold sway over the lands of Men. Will you speak true with me, Calithil?”

Míriel strains to hear her answer, but there is only a sob.

“I will hang them both,” says Pharazôn.

“No,” says Sauron. “Give me the handmaid. You cannot execute your wife, not now. This one is Amandil’s creature, and she cannot be the only one. They love Ar-Zimraphel for her father. Her name, her plight, is a matter of some strong feeling among their common folk, even if there is no love lost between her and Amandil. Do not make her death the spark that sets them all aflame. Without their agitation, she will be, hm,” he dismisses Míriel with a look, “docile. We will root out the vermin ourselves, will cleanse your kingdom with the holy fire, and when they see that your queen can do nothing but watch, their faith in her will be broken, and you will have nothing left to fear.”

 

They take Calithil. 

Míriel finds her feet, her voice, too late, and tries to follow, but there is a guard at her door again, as there hasn’t been since the early days of her marriage, and he is none too gentle in blocking her escape.

She stumbles back into her room, standing in the center of the rug, lost. From outside she can still hear the sounds that woke her, men shouting, dogs barking and, in the distance, the crack of axes. She had thought it was an exaggeration.

Míriel wraps her arms about herself and goes to the window, where she stands for a long time. There is a court below her window, lit nearly day-bright with lamps and torches like an empty stage. If Isildur was this night’s main player, he has escaped into the wings, and all the other actors have given chase. The scene is set for the aging queen’s tragic monologue, for her final surrender. The yard is stone-flagged, and her chamber is high above it. There is no other way out of the room. Míriel climbs, unsteady, onto the sill, her shift billowing about her in the breeze. It is cool tonight, the first breath of fall, and it chills the sweat on her skin, raises gooseflesh on her belly and forearms.

She doesn't know why she climbs down.

 

They leave her there for days. She alternates weeping with pacing until she can do neither, and then she sleeps until evil dreams wake her and she repeats the cycle. When next she wakes, her husband’s guards are in the room with her.

“Dress,” they tell her, and they refuse to leave while she does so. They have the courtesy to turn away, though, which makes this far from the worst humiliation she has suffered at her husband’s hands.

It is hard, though, when she does not have Calithil to help with the rows of tiny buttons, the complicated knots, when her hands shakes with hunger and her head aches with thirst. She can’t manage any more than the simplest braid and when she tries to paint her face to cover the bruise, she looks more like a performer at a festival than like a queen.

She only allows herself to think of this, of how pitiable she is, of how she cannot rise to meet even this puny challenge, because if she thinks of why she must dress herself this morning, she will weep. 

The guards escort her to a covered litter. The coolness of the night has given way to a hot day and she may as well be in an oven. There are crowds outside, their voices rising in an anxious clamor like water on a hot pan. Her chest is too tight, the weight of her clothes too much, she will be sick if it all doesn’t stop. Her stomach lurches as the litter teeters and rights itself, she can hear shouts and curses from outside, but muffled by the growing roar in her ears. It stops at last and the door opens to an angry sky; clouds roils overhead, but no cooling breeze reaches the masses in the street. There is a stuttering flash of lightning in the distance, but no thunder to be heard.

Míriel has seen the great temple from the windows of the palace, its walls rising from the crown of the great hill of golden Armenelos. She saw the early days of its construction, watched the land cleared and the mighty foundations laid, and then she looked away. Her own windows do not face the temple, and she has avoided those that do on her walks about the palace, like a child hiding her head beneath the blankets. She has heard Calithil’s whispered descriptions, though, and finds that they did not do it justice. The walls are pale sandstone and featureless, a vast blank expanse stretching upward to the silvered dome, so bright that it reflects the angry sky above. Its entryways are arches of colossal scale, like they are built to admit something much larger than the Men who throng about them.

Inside it is cavernous and the echoes of the crowd reverberate from every surface in a rising tumult that swells and ebbs like something breathing, and Míriel can almost believe that the discord will itself bring forth its own creator.

Míriel pauses beneath the arch, afraid to go further. Already she can feel the tugging of the madness within, like the tide teasing at her ankles. The guard on her left grunts and grabs her elbow, bruisingly tight, and they march her forward, the crowd giving way before them. 

There is no light within but that which falls through a circular opening in the dome, for it this is a temple to the darkness. The sickly greenish light of the storm strewn sky falls upon a great stone vessel, piled high with Nimloth’s white boughs. Before that is a stone slab, waist high and the length of a body.

“No,” she whispers, and tries to pull her arm away, but the guard tightens his grip, almost carrying her up the steps to the dais where her husband waits.

He looks like a fool, his violet robes of state, his gold-winged crown, bright and gaudy in the somber and unornamented temple. He looks like an aged peacock. Beside him is Sauron, and the contrast does the king no favors, for he is beautiful beyond mortal measure and dressed in a white shift. He might almost be carved from stone but for the golden flash of his eyes.

Pharazôn reaches for Míriel, takes her arm from the guard and her fright is such that she does not pull away, leaning into his grip as if it is the only thing keeping her upright. He looks over at her, and says something that Míriel cannot hear.

Sauron lifts a hand and the silence that falls is so stark that Míriel can hear the crowd breathing as one. He speaks simply, the way he has when she has spoken to him in the palace, a gentle counterpoint to her husband’s legendary tempers. He speaks of death, their so-called gift, of this land, Land of the Gift, from which they are forbidden to approach the powers in the west. Their land is hated, he says, feared, he says, because of the things they can do. They hated another, he says, feared him, he says, because he was strong, because he did not lie. Who then should this land worship? Who then will hear them if they cry out for help? Should they seek the powers, or should they seek the one the powers fear?

His words slither and buzz and Míriel cannot hold them in her mind. The crowd does not make a sound, but its frenzy pulses and writhes in the sanctuary. The sky flashes overhead and Sauron laughs.

“Let us make our own light,” he says, “Our own flame undying.”

The king gestures and two attendants spring forward with torches. They must have soaked the wood with oil already, for it catches immediately, painting the faces of the crowd with flickering gold. The shadows writhe dark between the flames and the faces of the congregation stretch unnaturally, into an ecstasy that tugs at something within her, that makes her want to join them, to feel the thing that moves in the shadows of this place.

Then her husband speaks, and Míriel cannot hear him, his words a meaningless gabble in her ears. When they bring forth Calithil, a part of her wants to laugh. She wants to cry out that they’ve made a mistake, that this is not her friend. This is some other creature, shorn and unlovely, its face swollen, body bent and graceless. Then she looks up, her eyes still bright and kind when they find Míriel.

“No,” Míriel whispers again. “No, no, no, no.”

Sauron spares her one glance before he goes to work.

When it is over, Calithil (and the others - there are many others) are nothing but dark stains on the stone slab and a smell that will linger in Míriel’s hair for days.

The crowd departs in silence, no man quite meeting the eyes of the man beside him. Míriel sways and sinks to her knees as the darkness blooms at the edges of her vision.

 

She wakes in a small room, simple, like a scribe’s office. There’s a small wooden desk, its pigeonholes filled with scrolls, with envelopes, full but orderly. Beside an inkwell a man’s skull leers at her, bone as clean and white as a shell. Sauron looks up from his notes when she sits up and pulls the cloth from her brow.

“Better?” he asks. “There is water on the table. You must be thirsty.”

She looks away, and once she hears the scritch of his pen again she pours herself a cup. She drinks it too fast and leaves herself gasping, but she fills the cup again.

“You will make yourself ill.”

“What of it?”

“You’ve already been sick on that bed once.”

She looks at him and drains the glass.

“I would have said you were afraid of me, earlier.”

Míriel sets down the glass and wipes her lips with the back of her hand. “Are you trying to frighten me?” She knows that she should be afraid, but she can feel nothing but a yawning ache. It throbs beside her like a predator, and it will swallow her whole if she lets it, but if she keeps moving, perhaps it won’t catch up. She looks at Sauron, clean again (he’d been blood nose-to-knees by the end of his work in the temple), an emerald bright robe setting off the gold on his fingers, in his eyes, and she tries to conjure what she had felt in the temple, but it is gone.

“No.”

“I don’t think that there’s anything left that anyone can do to hurt me.” It isn’t true, but it isn’t a lie, either. Her voice sounds very far away.

“There is always something.”

“She was lying, you know. If she told you that I knew nothing of it, I mean.”

“Who? Ah, yes, the maid. She wasn’t needed. I didn’t need her.”

“She was my -- ”

“What was she, Tar-Míriel?”

“My friend.”

Something flashes, that strange gold at the back of his eyes, the thing that he so cleverly hides. “As I said: unnecessary, insignificant, worthless. Like you. Like me.”

“You?”

“Your husband says you are a fool. Would you believe that I doubted him?” He smiles, indulgent. “Yes, worthless, like me.” There is something behind those words, that buzz that creeps and echoes. “I am a servant, Tar-Míriel.”

“My husband’s?”

Sauron laughs. Míriel shakes her head like a dog with something in its ear. 

“Whose?”

“You know. Did you not spend the day at his altar?”

Míriel’s head feels heavy. She wonders if she is already dreaming. “You would bring him back? That is why you sacrificed them?”

Sauron looks past her. “I have failed my master many times.” Something twists across his face, the fair visage drops for an instant to show something scared and ravenous. His voice rises and the air in the room shakes with its sound. “He was chained and cast beyond this world but I am made to serve and I have chosen my master. There is nothing I would not do to atone for my failure, no sacrifice I would not make. I have torn myself asunder, I will tear the world to shreds at his command. I will give all -- I gave -- I gave -- “ 

Míriel wants to paw at her ears and whine.

He plucks her hand from her ear and bends to look into her face. “He needs no temple. Do you understand? I do this because I hate this land, because I hate your king. I will give my master your husband, your little lover, your people. I will give him all of you, this island my gift to Him that waits beyond.”

“And me?”

“Ah, yes. That. You will be his, too. As I am. But to you, I will give a choice.” He opens his hand and smiles wide at her. “It is yours, both this and your future, if you would bind yourself to me.” A gold ring winks from his palm.

“As your wife?” It seems a mad proposal if that is what it is.

Sauron laughs at her again. “No, you’ve had enough of that, I think, and I -- well, no matter.”

“I find it hard to imagine that the great Zigur of Númenor is so great a fool. Did you think that I would watch you -- “ words fail in the face of what she witnessed. “You hurt her until she screamed. And then you went on until she stopped. And I stood by and watched. And now you think that this trinket will be enough to buy my loyalty?”

“You watched . You feared me, you feared your husband more than you loved her. I offer you a chance to serve, to love, something that will make you strong enough that you will never fear again. Loyalty divided is worse than worthless. I took her from you so that you would love only that which I love. I have purified my own heart. You must do the same.”

“If I say no, will I find myself on your altar?”

He touches her cheek and his hand smells of hot metal. “I will not be the one who kills you, Tar-Míriel.”

She doesn’t see when he leaves.

 

Her world shrinks further after that. A new handmaid appears and is gone in a week, then another the week after that. They speak to her of nothing but what they must and Míriel thinks they are afraid.

When she leaves her chambers, guards trail behind, and she is blocked from the halls that welcome visitors.

She drifts, like a ghost in her own home, and at night she looks out of the window onto the courtyard and considers her choices. She does not look away from the temple anymore. She stands in the garden with the best view of the hill and lets the seasons cycle around her as the silver dome grows black with smoke, as the reek of burnt flesh reaches even to the palace.

Her husband is building an armada. Míriel isn’t meant to know this.

Her husband will not come to her rooms anymore. If he wants Míriel he sends one of his attendants for her. She thinks that he likes to make her parade through the halls, all dressed up like a game bird at a feast. She thinks that he likes to tell himself that it means she desires him, forgetting that she has never had even a semblance of choice in the matter. 

One night an attendant comes to her door, an arrogant young man with too much oil in his hair. He stares at her, dismissive, and she knows that he resents the errand, that whoever his family is, he believes it beneath him to escort a tired old woman to her marital bed. She closes the door in his face and goes back to bed.

The next night, her husband sends Sauron. 

He takes his time about the errand, pouring them each a thimble sized glass of the almond cordial that they make on the mainland and telling her all about the fleet that is under construction in the western harbor. He tells her how her husband will empty their treasury into the building of these boats, how he will take ship to assail the gods in their very home, how he plans to wrest immortality from their very hands.

Most importantly, he tells her that the king will journey to the western havens to oversee the completion of his flagship.

“He will go there, and he will die,” he says.

“Isn’t that treason?” replies Míriel. “I could tell him, you know.”

Sauron shrugs. “You could. And I will tell him that you are only angry that you won’t be the one to do it.” It is winter and cold in the palace, but his arms are bare but for a cuff of gold above his elbow. “I will remain here, and your guards will answer to me. I thought it only fair that you know.” He stands. “Are you ready?”

 

Ar-Pharazôn leaves Míriel behind when he sets forth. She shivers beneath a canopy, her quilted robes not enough to keep the chill rain at bay, and when he has gone, she returns to her rooms and sleeps for the rest of the day. When night falls, she kneels before her closet and reaches to the back where, behind the silken gowns and embroidered slippers, sits a twine wrapped bundle of oilcloth. Inside are simple clothes, traveling clothes that any woman in the city might wear. Calithil had gathered them for her years ago. Can it truly have been so long? 

She dresses, twines her hair into a simple braid and looks at herself in the mirror. If there was ever a queen to be seen in her face, she is long gone. Somehow, she has gotten old, but gained neither wisdom nor strength in the process. She pulls the cloak about her shoulders, draws up the hood, and opens the door on an empty hallway.

Her rabbit heart whispers that this is Sauron’s devising, that trap or test, it cannot be trusted, but what else is she to do? Remain? She sneaks into a storeroom and fills a sack with food, and leaves through the servants’ gate, expecting at every step to be stopped, recognized, questioned, but no one seems to even notice her, except to swear at her for being in their way.

The streets of the city are even more overwhelming to her, the crowds thick and jostling, the sky overhead too open, too exposed. She wraps her arms around herself, hunches her shoulders, and tries to make herself as small as she can.

She is fighting the crowd, everyone in the streets going the other way and there is something feverish and frightening in their faces, something she has seen before. She rounds a corner, taking a wrong turn, and sees the temple hill rising high above the city. From this distance the temple doesn’t rise so much as loom, silver dome stained black with smoke, sandstone walls daubed with rusty red. It appears that worshipers have been making their own sacrifices outside of the temple walls.

As she watches, a thin line of smoke issues from the top of the dome and a hungry moan goes up from the crowd around the temple. Something in her belly echoes with it and she turns and takes a step, two, back to the center of the city. There is power there after all, power like she’s never had, power enough to make her safe. 

She pulls up her hood and hurries away.

 

Tar-Míriel, Queen of Númenor, is, as it transpires, not practiced at traveling alone. The island has good roads, safe and ruthlessly maintained, so getting lost is no worry. She sets out on the Rómenna road with little enough trouble. Once freed of the Armenelos and all that it signifies, she finds it freeing to walk, alone and unremarked, across the country, for a few hours at least. Before long, though, her feet begin to tire, then to ache. A blister rubs at the back of her heel and she cannot find a comfortable way to carry the bag of her supplies. It is hot  and she is ravenous.

She stops beneath a grove of trees and realizes that she has done a poor job of packing. The foods that seemed wise in the pantry, seem foolish now: too heavy to carry and not substantial enough to justify their weight. She had even taken a little sack of dried grain, giving no thought to how she would cook it. She sighs and eats a handful of nuts, then fills a waterskin at a roadside spring.

The rest only makes her feet hurt worse.

 

She does not sleep well that night. It is colder than she realized it would be, and her cloak is not enough for comfort. She lies awake, shifting about, trying to find a comfortable position, while also keeping all of her hands and feet covered from the cool night. It feels as if she has just drifted off when the sun peeks over the horizon.

She is hungry and footsore by the time she reaches Rómenna, but she feels accomplished in a way that she hasn’t in a very long time. She is hopeful until she arrives at Amandil’s estate and is denied admittance. Her disguise is, apparently, too successful. She loiters about the door for hours until a servant finally pays her enough mind to look at her signet ring. He doesn’t believe her, she can see it, but he goes to have it verified.

Things move a bit more quickly after that. She is hustled inside and shown to a bath, a chamber where she can rest until the lord (as the household persists in calling him, even though the lordship of Andúnië was abolished years ago, at Sauron’s suggestion) has time for her.

She is left alone for several hours, long enough to bathe and eat and rest. Long enough to get bored.

Finally they come to retrieve her, no servant this time, but Astoriel, wife of Elendil. She is quite a bit younger than Míriel, younger than Elendil as well. By all accounts, it is a love match. Seeing the woman before her, Míriel can well believe it. Astoriel has a settled sort of beauty, a confidence that makes Míriel burn with envy. She doubts that Astoriel has even hidden from her own husband. She looks as if she has never been afraid to walk beneath the sun. Míriel thinks that she had been like that once, but that young woman feels so far out of reach to who Míriel has become that she may as well have never existed.

Astoriel is not happy to see her, but even so she is courteous, asking about her journey, about the weather on the road.

Amandil may not be a lord any longer, but one would not know it from his home. It has something in it of the hunting lodge about it, with walls paneled in dark woods and hung with verdant tapestries of woodland scenes. It is austere in a way that seems calculated to play up the excesses of Ar-Pharazôn’s court, to set itself apart: traditional, manly, faithful. 

Tar-Míriel has no illusions about her own importance, not anymore, and so she knows that the way that it reminds her of her father is not deliberate, and that the way that the reminder stings and shames her is not targeted, but she feels very small as she follows Astoriel through the halls of the estate.

Amandil receives her in a study, lined with shelves that overflow with scrolls, with leatherbound books. He sits behind a desk, a fresco of Tar-Minyatur behind him. It’s faded, painted in the ancient style. He’s meant to look grave and wise, but Míriel always thinks he looks as if he’s just eaten something spoiled and is suffering the consequences. Míriel can’t decide whether or not Amandil suffers or benefits from the comparison. There’s a certain likeness to be seen, but even this old portrait would have been painted by a man who lived centuries after Tar-Minyatur, and so was likely intended to flatter one of his distant descendants.

Elendil stands at his right shoulder, two younger men at his left. It is Anarion and -- Míriel squints, doubting her eyes for a moment, but no, it is Isildur, not changed so much since the last time she saw him, standing again with his father in Ar-Pharazôn’s court, his anger a barely sheathed blade when her husband formally declared Amandil not only the last Lord of Andúnië, but lord of nothing at all. Amandil had watched Sauron, certain, perhaps, that he saw the true source of the decree, or perhaps simply unwilling to reconcile his one-time companion with the raving tyrant before him. Isildur had followed his lead, disgust ill-hidden on his face. Elendil, though, had watched her, much as he does now. He follows her gaze to his son and lifts an eyebrow at her, even as Astoriel comes to stand beside him.

Sauron had been wrong. Isildur survived whatever wounds the guards dealt him, but it seems to have been a near thing. Now that she looks closer, she can see the touch of illness on him, even so long after. He’s a bit paler than Anarion, eyes a bit deeper, and he’s leaning on a wooden stick, but he is alive. Míriel wonders if Sauron knows. Isildur must feel her gaze because he looks back at her, his lip curled in a faint sneer.

“We weren’t expecting such an esteemed visitor,” says Amandil, hands folded on the desk in front of him. He has aged differently than Ar-Pharazôn, gone lean and ropy, his face hard like leather, but his voice is the same, and conjures her father’s memory even closer. How many nights had she sat nearby and listened to them debate? How long had she listened to them worry, to argue over how far they could push the land back to the old ways, with Míriel’s father arguing for time and reason and Amandil playing the firebrand, calling for demonstrations of contrition, public punishment of the King’s Men, a mass conversion the only thing, in his view, that could save their nation.

“I’m sorry for the surprise,” Míriel says, “I wanted to send word before, but I am watched.”

“Oh? Why is the Queen of our fair land watched? Does our king not trust his wife?”

Míriel grits her teeth. “You must know that he does not.”

“Must I?” Amandil lifts his folded hands to his lips, pensive. “Perhaps we don’t hear all of the news out here in the wilds. Last I heard you were at his side, worshiping in that cursed temple, and holding private audience with that abomination that he calls Zigur.”

Her stomach plummets, her hopes curdle. “None of it willing, my lord. Surely you know --”

“Shall I tell you what I know?”

She presses her lips together and nods.

“I know that your father was weak. A good man, yes, but weak. He could see far, but he could not see what needed to be done. He died too young, unwilling to see the work to its completion. I do not know what spell you wove over him, but I know that he believed that you would carry it on, and that he was wrong. I know that it was love for you that led him to refuse my son’s suit, and that you pleaded love for another, but I also know that you married his enemy even before he was cold in his tomb.”

And oh, how Míriel wants to refute that, to tell them all how it truly was, how little choice she had in the matter, but this room is full of unfriendly eyes. Maybe she could have told Elendil, alone; they had been close once, but she cannot do it here, now.

“I am afraid, my lord. Zigur’s influence grows daily, the sacrifices go on. Ar-Pharazôn is building a fleet. Did you know that?”

Elendil stirs. “A fleet?”

So word had not reached them here. “Yes, the greatest the world has seen, he says. He will sail on the west, he says that he will wrest the immortality the gods have denied us from their very hands.”

Amandil frowns. “He’s mad.”

“Very likely,” Míriel agrees. “I do not have my father’s vision, but even I can see that this will be our doom. You can stop this.”

“I do not think that I can. I’m not certain that I should. This land has turned its back on holiness, has fallen into depravity. It does not deserve mercy.”

“You will do nothing? There are Faithful still, even in Armenelos, and what of your people here?”

“I did not say that I would do nothing,” his voice is like a lash, but it softens. “I only said that I wasn’t certain I should.” He stands. “You have given us a great deal to consider. Thank you for making the journey.”

Míriel feels the hope wash out from beneath her feet, like sand with a receding wave. “Please,” she says, “permit me to stay here. He will give me to the temple if he finds out that I’ve come here.”

“It is a proud thing to die for your faith, Ar-Zimraphel.”

“That is not my name,” she whispers.

“Isn’t it? Then reject it, and stand proud before the One. I have little enough power left. I will not spend it on a coward. I wish you well, for your father’s sake.”

It rains the whole way home.

“I trust you had an enjoyable visit? How are your dear cousins?”

Míriel had not let him in. She had not even left her bed, and yet, here is Sauron, comfortable in a chair near her window, watching the storm rage outside. Where is her attendant? 

She returned from her trip three days ago, soaked to the skin, feet blistered, shoulders sore, and had taken to her bed. Her new maid, useless by design, no doubt, made a token effort to get her to eat, to bathe, to dress, but Míriel had ignored her. Is it any surprise, then, that she had gone away? 

Míriel rolls over so that she can face him without craning her neck. Her eyes still feel hot and gritty, even though she has long since run out of tears. She can smell herself, the dank sweat scent of an unwashed body, the sickly sweet of incense burning somewhere in the room. Sauron wrinkles his nose at her and she thinks that if she could reach the chamber pot without moving, she would throw it at his head.

“My cousins are well,” she tries to say, but has to clear her throat. He passes her a cup of something steaming. She drinks and tries again. “My cousins are well. Isildur looks more like his father every day.”

If that news surprises Sauron, he doesn’t show it. “And yet, you returned. Why?”

“It was not by choice.” Has she ever done anything by her own choice? What would such a thing even feel like? She can hardly touch the woman she once was, the one that loved so much, that felt strongly enough to defy her father, that believed that her will could shape the world.

“What would you choose, Tar-Míriel?”

“To be free.”

“No one is free,” he says. 

Lightning flashes outside and Míriel flinches, awaiting the thunder.

“But if the master you have served proves unworthy, you may choose another.”

When it comes, it is a slow growl, echoing from the stones of the city, the sound growing, feeding upon itself as it bounces back and forth, and Míriel remembers with a thrill low in her belly the way that power had grown and echoed and fed on itself in the temple of Melkor, and how the thing that had frightened her most was that she had wanted it to go on and on, to see what it could become if it was fed and nurtured, to see it brought to its peak and released into the world, all of it, chaos and terror and freedom.

“Get up, Tar-Míriel,” says Sauron. “Take a bath.”

He leaves behind a little gold ring, winking in the lamplight.

When Ar-Pharazôn returns, she goes to meet him, standing at Sauron’s side in a dress of gold-shot saffron, sun bright enough to combat the storms that have barely abated. It is late summer now and the crops are rotting in the fields, the roads a stinking mire.

The king seems hardly to notice, his words full of wild plans. There was a crowd awaiting his return, a backlog of petitioners, bureaucrats and functionaries all with ledgers full of expenses they need approved, the king’s judgment sought. Ar-Pharazôn brushes them all aside and calls for a feast. The crowd cheers, the advisors mutter, and Sauron catches Míriel’s eye.

At the feast, Ar-Pharazôn drinks too much, kisses her on the mouth, his lips wet and flabby, breath smelling like vinegar and rot. He makes a speech that goes on for too long and says nothing at all. Míriel runs her fingertips over the smooth gold of the ring, not on her finger, not yet, but at her waist, her red silk girdle threaded through it. She listens, nods as if he is speaking sense, and refills his wine.

The next day, Míriel walks the halls to the corridors that she has abandoned, the ones where the kingdom is ruled, where decisions are made. The court has assembled, and murmurs in wait, restless, but Pharazôn is not there, sleeping very soundly, no doubt. Sauron knows all sorts of subtle poisons and untraceable drugs. Míriel wishes she had availed herself of his expertise sooner. 

All sound stops when she enters the room and announces that the king is ill, but that she will hear their suits. There is a brief outcry, a burst of incredulity as she sits, and then Sauron comes to stand at her side.

“Let us begin with the matter of the western road,” she says and, strangely, the business of ruling is not as forgotten as she had thought.

That night, it rains. 

Míriel dreams of a flood, of water rising in the halls, pouring in through the windows. The palace is silent, deserted but for her, but for the serpents that writhe and twist beneath the waves. She climbs up on her bed, the way she did when she was a child afraid of monsters hiding beneath.

“Father!” she calls out, over and over, but she can’t make a sound because she is drowning, her mouth is full of water.

Her father stands in the doorway of her room, just as she remembers him from her childhood, from before he was king. He is himself and not, for he is also old and leathered, his hands folded skeptical at his mouth.

“Are you afraid?” he asks.

She wants to protest that it is not that she is afraid, it is that she is drowning.

“Recall your faith, my daughter,” he says.

Will that stop the waters? 

“No, but you won’t be afraid anymore.”

When she wakes, the courtyard below her window is full of water, trees standing in a morning grey pond. She watches a coot float past as a heron picks its graceful way through, barely ruffling the surface of their new domain. Sudden as a thunderclap, all of the birds take wing, a clatter of feathers from the trees and the water. She can hear the barking of hounds from far away and something else, something beneath it, a rumbling that she feels rather than hears, rising up from the bones of the earth.

 

Míriel goes to court daily now. The king no longer has the appetite for it, it seems, all his thought bent on the completion of the fleet. Míriel raises taxes in his name and levies an army to support him. She will be free of Ar-Pharazôn if she must bankrupt the whole island to do it.

“He is old,” she says to Sauron. “Should I not just poison him?”

“Who will rise to take his place, Tar-Míriel? Will that one be any better?”

She knows the answer.

“What if he does not fail?” she asks. “What if the gods fall to him?”

Sauron laughs. He laughs often, of late, his mirth strange and disconcerting, barely contained, and his hands always smell of blood. “He cannot win.”

“Then he will return angry, and he will kill me.”

“No man will slay thee, Tar-Míriel. You have immortality in your grasp already, or have you forgotten?” He tugs at the silk of her girdle, and she clasps her fist over the ring, protective. She is afraid to wear it, but more afraid to have it out of her sight.

Ar-Pharazôn leaves again, a great parade conjured somehow from the worried throngs that gathered that morning to watch the ceremony in the temple: the last King of Númenor, blessed with the blood of the Faithful, even as the earth rumbled and the storms threatened. He leads his army off to the coast and Míriel returns to her rooms.

The earth shakes every day after that, and all the men of the city grow used to it, going about their business, but the dogs never learn the trick of it, and the hounds run frantic, their eyes white and rolling, lips thick with foam as they bark themselves frenzied.

As predicted, the harvest is poor, beaten into the mud by the ceaseless storms, and the people are hungry. They go to the temple, and they beg Sauron for help, they beg him to stave off the gods wrath, they beg for the dark to intercede for them; perhaps they are like the dogs after all, driven just as mad by their doom, only quieter about it. Sauron laughs again and casts a handful of entrails upon the fire. They come to Tar-Míriel instead, the nobles, the councilors, the strong men of the kingdom, and she remembers the room full of witnesses on her wedding night and she stares back at them all without a word.

Great clouds gather in the west, like eagles stooping upon their prey, talons of lightning ready to tear the land asunder. 

Word arrives that the fleet has departed, the Ar-Pharazôn has sailed into the west, standing golden at the prow of his great ship Alcarondas. Míriel goes to the temple to find Sauron, the rain plastering her hair to her face as soon as she climbs from her litter, the rain stealing away her words when she tries to speak. 

The temple grounds are full of people, thronging the grounds, wailing, begging for admission, no longer certain which god will aid them, but there are guards at every gate, their swords red with blood. They let Míriel pass.

Inside it is empty, and strangely silent, the constant sound of the rain, the clamor of the crowd all faded together to a blanket muffling the smaller noises. The temple is made more vast by its emptiness, dark unadorned walls stretching into shadows that shift and beckon in the ever-dancing light of the altar flame. Rain falls through the hole at the top of the dome, a waterfall sluicing down beside the fire, rivers pouring over the steps of the altar.

“He has sailed,” says Tar-Míriel, into the darkness. There is a crash of lightning overhead, but she doesn’t tremble anymore. “He departed more than a month ago, they said. Will you save our land?”

She can’t see him, can only hear his laughter, a long, low chuckle that begins as a feeling but rises until it becomes sound. “Míriel, why would you think that I would do that? Have I not told you that I will give this whole land to the Dark? That I will tear the world asunder and feed it to my master, piece by piece? What did you think I meant by that?”

“I hoped -- “

He stops her. “You did not. You wanted this end as much as I. If you have lied to yourself, don’t blame me for it.”

“You will die with us.”

He laughs again and steps beneath the hole in the dome. “No, that is more mercy than we will ever be given.” The dull green stormlight pours in with the rain and his fair face is washed of everything but the laughing shadows of his skull.

“Mercy for whom?” she asks.

“You, me, the world. Did you think there was kindness anywhere in it?”

Míriel thinks of Calithil, of her father, and she holds her tongue.

He laughs again and Míriel suddenly cannot abide the sound. She pulls off her girdle, tugging at the knot, hands slippery on the damp silk, but she yanks it free, pulls the ring from it and throws it at Sauron. 

“You lied to me.”

“Never. You heard what you wished.”

There’s a flash of lightning and a great crash that feels like it’s right above them, the whole temple ringing with it, like they are inside of a giant bell. Míriel staggers back to her feet, dazed, knees bruised, not even sure when she fell. The light pours in through a great crack in the dome.

“You hate this world as much as I do, Míriel,” he says, holding up his hands to the open sky. The lightning snakes, almost leisurely down from the clouds and caresses the altar before him before it, too, explodes into dust. “Go, let it kill you, or defy it, here, with me.” 

He laughs again, and Míriel runs.

 

She does not know where she is going. The streets are chaos, the very earth heaving beneath her feet, and so she runs, rain wet, her dress flapping loose about her body. The world is ending around her and she is become a creature of fear and flight, and she wants to cower, the way she has for all these years, but somehow, here at the end of all things, she has found a measure of freedom, and so she takes it, running wild, a pent hound no longer, but a wolf at last.

She finds herself beyond the city walls again and looks up to the sky and its angry mass of clouds. Maybe she is past salvation already, maybe there was never any grace in the gods of her father, maybe Sauron is right and his master is the only one of all of them who did not abandon the world, but the holy mountains rise before her, the flanks of the Meneltarma gleaming like blood in a shard of dying sunlight.

She climbs the sacred way, now tumbled and unkempt, as the mountain has been forbidden for all the years of Ar-Pharazôn’s reign, until her silk slippers are sodden tatters, until her knuckles are bleeding. She knows not how long it has been when the mountain explodes, for day has become dark as night, here in the wreck of Númenor. 

Her ears are numb to thunder, but this is louder, a sound rent from deep within, the great climax of every little spasm that has shaken the earth thus far. There are flames above her, the mountain erupting, destroying herself in her fury, the very rocks turned to steam and ash and glowing rivers of fire. She stops and stares. There is no salvation there, the One has shown his face to her at last, and Sauron is right, there is no mercy in it, not for her.

She turns from the mountaintop and in the red light of its fires, she sees the wave rising and cresting, crashing already over the city, crumbling the walls of Melkor’s temple, filling her worn paths in the hallways of her palace. The whole land of Númenor is a stain on the face on the earth and it will be washed away, clean, and little frightened Tar-Míriel will be but another puff of steam where the water meets the flames.

She sits down and waits.

 

The sea is fathomless, dark, and silent. It is hard to hold a form there, hard to shape flesh into form. The thing that is Sauron writhes and slouches, strange muscles and sinews that don’t quite obey. What matter? He needs neither face to speak, nor hands to do. He has tools and they are enough.

He is not alone. 

“Here we are again,” he greets Tar-Míriel, last queen of Númenor.

“Am I dead? Are you dead?” She does not sound frightened.

“No. Ar-Pharazôn is. Númenor is drowned, the world is changed.”

Light grows, golden. Míriel sees him now and flinches.

He laughs and it hurts, a sound torn from a throat that isn’t there. “You are no beauty yourself.”

“Why am I alive?”

“Because I wish it.” He opens his hand, shows her the ring.”

“I will not be your queen. I will not be anyone’s queen.”

“Be a king, then, and your own. I care not.” 

“A king in your service.”

Sauron would shrug if he had shoulders. “Still more power than you’ve ever held. I am cruel, but I do not lie. If you serve me I shall reward you.” This is itself a lie, many who have trusted him know this well.

“If I say no?”

“You should be dead. You still have a choice.” 

“I do not fear death.” 

“That is good. I would not have it said that I forced you.”

She that was Tar-Míriel considers. “King, you say? And my own?”

 

She takes the ring.