The Molded Ones by Caranthol

The Molded Ones

Of necessity some of the characters in this story are called by their Sindarin/Quenya names, even though those languages did not yet exist during the period in which the story is set. This is because no other names are given for those characters in Tolkien's works. As for the word kwendi, I use that instead of quendi, because the former seems to be the correct form in primitive Elvish.

Read The Molded Ones

I.

 Her hurried breath emerged as thick clouds of steam, as she ran through the chilly forest. Pine needles, roots and sharp stones scored the bare soles of her feet, but she cared nothing about it. Away, away – that was her only thought, besides thanking her luck for the fact that the snows had not yet fallen. There would be no easy track to follow.

 She ran until it felt to her that her heart must burst out from her chest in another step or two. Only then she stopped, and after catching her breath a little tottered on the brink of a nearby pond which she had noticed by the reflection of the starlight glimmering on the still water. She knelt with difficulty caused by her bulging belly and scooped icy water into her hands. After drinking greedily and bathing her face she sighed and remained on the brink of the water, staring at its surface.

Surrounded by a crown of stars, her own face looked back at her. Seeing her image caused her an inexplicable anguish, but she could not help studying it. Deep wrinkles and scars criss-crossed her oval face and when she grimaced at the sight, a set of strong, yellow teeth were revealed and the sides of her stubby nose drawn to ugly wrinkles. Her complexion was a pale gray that even she found ugly. She wondered at her eyes, though, as often before when she had seen them in the surface of a water-basin in the deep torchlit dungeon. They did not seem to fit the rest of her face. Blue and bright, their glimmer at the reflection was somewhat like that of the stars. Of all the features of her face, the eyes were the only parts that were beautifully shaped.

 Poikâ, ejâ poikâ, Eliwen! Ele ejâ gälae...

 She shook her head. Why did strange words come again into her thoughts? Always striking her mind suddenly and unbidden, they were more beautiful thanthe language she had spoken from birth, but incomprehensible. Yet, she felt that if she truly tried, she could understand them. It felt to her that if she let her tongue to utter the words as they came, they would flow easier than the harsh sounds of her own speech. But she had never dared to try in the hearing of others. Someone would tell the Corrector, and the consequences would be heavy.

 Magra lambê, banja lambê...

 But here, when she was alone... A sudden shiver ran through her at the thought and she looked around her warily. One never knew if a night-flier, a vampire, would lurk nearby. It would hear, it would come! It would... She dared not finish the thought.

 

Eliwen...

 

There came that word again, the only one she could somehow understand without any effort. The Maiden of Stars, it meant. Her secret name. It had been the first of the words to appear, many revolutions of stars ago, and she had instantly known it was a name for her. It had followed her everywhere, sounded like a summons of sorts. How much more pleasing it sounded than her true birthname, Gûthrakha!

 But now was not the time to ponder on names. She had to move on. To where, she had no idea. It was only important that wherever she went, it would be far away from the vast fortress where she had been born and spent her life. Somewhere, where her tongue could utter the sweet words without fear and taste them as they came out. Somewhere, where the constant pressure, the always pulling tug of some will on her mind would not touch her anymore.

 She rose to her feet and started to walk. But only after a few steps the first cramp came. Others followed, and with them a burning pain. She tried to walk on, bent and groaning, but it was too difficult. Her bladder emptied before she could prevent it, and her ragged dress was soiled.

 ”No, not now! Not yet!” she panted, as she sunk on the ground. She dragged herself to a tree and propped herself sitting against its trunk. Remembering what she had seen the other women do in the fortress, she took a sharp stone in her hand.

 The cramps intensified and became more frequent. She could feel the child moving in her womb, as it started to come out. It felt to her that the only way to relieve pain would be to push with the muscles of her lower body. So she began to do so, and a shrill shriek escaped her lips. Let the night-fliers or the Corrector hear, now she had to either scream or bite her tongue in half.

 

------

 

Gûthrakha breathed heavily and let the child – a boy – suck her breast while she stared at the stars. A feeling of relief flooded her. It was done, and the child lived. She had been shocked when she first had seen it. It looked like no child she had seen earlier; there was sparse, coarse hair on its body for one thing. Also, its face was already at birth somewhat wrinkled and sunken, shorter than normally. It looked like a miniature of an ugly old man.

 But the initial revulsion she had felt had passed during the few moments it had taken to cut the umbilical cord with the stone and tie the remnant into a knot. Whatever it looked like, the thing was her child. Hers alone, as its father was no longer alive. Hers alone. She would not show the child to anyone. No, she would hide with it. Raise it alone and in secret, away from all others. She would kill anyone who tried to come between her and the child. That fierce thought seemed to give her strength. She wrapped her arms more tightly around the naked baby to shield it from the chill. She closed her eyes and fell asleep. Her last thought before the darkness of slumber came, the name for her child in that strange tongue:

 

Edelon.

 

The Firstborn.

 

------

 

Sounds of approaching footsteps awakened her. Even before she opened her eyes, she knew who was coming. Mairon's presence radiated far for some reason. She looked, and saw that it was indeed Mairon who walked towards her, accompanied by Trudkhë and Fagrôl. The latter two were men of her own people, tall but strangely bent. They stared at her with unfriendly eyes, Trudkhë with only one since he had lost the other in a fight with another man. At the side of the beautiful, glorious Mairon they seemed even uglier than they were.

 Gûthrakha felt a stab of fear, but it was too late to flee. So, she remained where she sat silent and unmoving, only trying to shelter the child from the gaze of the others.

 ”Ah, there you are!” Mairon said as he stepped close to her. ”My foolish dear girl, why did you run away? Do not you know that the darkness is full of dangers?”

 His voice was smooth. As always, it soothed Gûthrakha's mind. The voice seemed to probe her very brains and to numb the uneasy fear she felt almost constantly otherwise. Mairon's presence always seemed to lull her into a sort of happy stupor.

 ”I do,” she replied unsteadily. ”But – but I had to go.”

 Mairon looked at her intently with his almost painfully bright eyes. That look compelled her to speak further, although she would have rather kept silent. Her secret poured out of her before she realized what she was saying:

 ”The words, I had to know what they are. Where they come and why! I had to understand.”

 Mairon knelt beside her and laid his hand on her shoulder.

 ”What words, dear child? Tell me!”

 A warmth spread through Gûthrakha at the touch. Her mind could not resist even so far as before. She repeated some of the words, for the first time saying them aloud. They felt indeed marvelous at her tongue, and their sound made her ears perk in pleasure. The words felt so good, every syllable echoing like music. But at the same time, it felt somehow wrong to utter them in the presence of Mairon. Him hearing the beautiful words seemed to sully them. So, she stopped abruptly, well short of revealing her secret name. For some reason her very core recoiled from the thought of telling that to anyone, even Mairon.

 Mairon's face became grave, and he said:

 ”It is as I feared, Gûthrakha. Forget those words, and forget them quickly! How long have they troubled you?”

 She did not look at Mairon when she said:

 ”Only a very short time, master.”

 To cover her lie, she quickly said:

 ”But what is this, master? From where does this strange language come?”

”From the enemies,” Mairon said earnestly. ”They have powers unknown, and will try their all to entice you to come to them. This is their trick. Do not listen to them! If they ever have you in their clutches, they will destroy you and your child. They will consume your very soul if you let them.”

 Gûthrakha trembled all over, as she listened to him. The enemies? Those terrible beings she had always been warned of?

 ”But it sounds so beautiful,” she said weakly.

 ”That is the very snare!” Mairon exclaimed. ”You would not come to them if they revealed themselves as they are. No, no, they will pretend to seek your good. They will present themselves to you as beautiful and wondrous, even though they are evil to the core. Beware, child! You have been nearly ruined. What luck that I found you before them!”

”Yes, master,” Gûthrakha replied. ”But please tell me, is it because of the enemies that you treat us in such a hard way?”

 At the querying look Mairon gave her, she stammered:

 ”I – I mean the Corrector. Why has he to punish us so severely? It was partly because of him that I ran away. You are good, master, but he is so cruel. I could not stand it anymore.”

 Mairon gave her a sad smile.

 ”His severity is for your own good, though it pains me also. Have you not listened at the lessons I have given you? You have to be made strong and hardy, if you are to withstand the malice of the Valar. You have to be as wily and cunning as them, if you want to escape their snares. Struggle and pain build you, hard as they may feel. But I will help you to bear it. I will help you to reveal your true potential.”

 Gûthrakha looked at Mairon with an expression of love. He was so good. Always patient, always ready with an explanation. Yes, he would protect her and her brethren from those terrible Valar. The words tried to echo in her mind again, but now that she knew what they were, she brushed them aside. It was hard, even painful, but she succeeded. In the presence of Mairon even her secret name was now only a faint echo, of which she was not yet fully ready to let go. But prompted by the familiar pressure of that outside will, she knew the memory of the name would fade eventually, if she only kept rejecting it. The horror of having nearly run to a trap shook her, and with it came gratitude for her saviour from that danger. She took Mairon's hand and kissed it.

 ”Thank you, master. What a fool I was to run!”

”Do not thank me, but your Lord and maker, the great Melkor!” Mairon said. ”He is my master also, and it was he who commanded me to be your guide. I know you feel his will at all times. Heed it, and all will be well.”

 He rose and picked the child up from Gûthrakha's arms, before she could prevent it.

 ”You are wise to come back to your senses. But you still have to be corrected, I fear,” Mairon said with the hint of gentle rebuke in his voice. ”The influence of the Enemy must be purged, lest it comes back with more force. But at least you are healthy, and so also seems to be your child.”

 Mairon looked closer at the baby and smiled.

 ”The child will later have to be examined properly, of course,” he said. ”But I think it will pass. Oh, yes, I am sure it will pass splendidly.”

 Suddenly Gûthrakha had had enough of watching strangers handling her baby. A fierce possessiveness and anger washed over her and overpowered even her fear and exhaustion. Every muscle in her body tensed, and her breathing became fast and shallow. She scrambled on her feet, ignoring the pain the movement caused. Even to her own surprise, she growled:

 ”Give him back to me!”

 ”Making demands, are we?” Mairon said with a mild voice. Then, with a rather sharper tone he went on:

 ”Do not compel me to report this also to the Corrector, woman! Keep your mouth shut and calm yourself. You will have your child back later.”

”No! I want him now!” Gûthrakha shrieked, and leaped towards Mairon. He merely stepped backwards, while his two companions rushed forwards. Trudkhë swung his fist and hit the charging woman straight in the face. She groaned and dropped to the ground, while her eyes rolled in her head.

 ”Shall I kill her, master?” the other companion said. Mairon shook his head and said with a smile:

 ”No, my friend. Let the Corrector deal with her. Lift her up, you two, and carry her home. Safely, mind you! You shall not harm her in any way. If you obey well, one of you may be chosen to assist in the correcting.”

 The pair looked disappointed but did as they were commanded. They started towards the fortress, dragging the limp form of Gûthrakha between them. Mairon lingered behind for a while, holding the infant on his arms and stroking its sparse hair almost tenderly. The child did not cry. It merely looked at him with strange eyes – reddish and squinted, with their small pupils more akin to the eyes of a lizard than those of a kwende.

 ”Yes, little one, you will do,” Mairon whispered. ”You are a marvel, the first true beginning of your kind.”

 

------

 

Gûthrakha shrieked again as Fagrôl pressed the hot iron against her naked side. The sickening smell of burning skin and flesh filled the small chamber. Her back was already a painful, steaming mass of whipped and scorched flesh.

 ”Very good,” the Corrector said and stepped closer. ”I think she has learned her lesson not to listen to the lies of the Enemy. You can go, Fagrôl.”

”But I was just getting warmed up,” Fagrôl said. ”Please, master Corrector, let me go on! She has to be punished. She tried to strike lord Mairon, after all!”

 The Corrector slapped the man with his iron-gauntleted hand with such force that the victim dropped to his knees.

 ”Do not contradict me, worm! Go!” the Corrector growled. He kicked the moaning and bleeding Fagrôl aside and concentrated on Gûthrakha who was suspended from the ceiling by his hands, and whose legs were spread apart with shackles fastened to the floor. Shaking the chains the Corrector said:

 ”Now, bitch, how do you feel about me?”

 Half senseless from pain and a sudden rage, Gûthrakha spat at the cruelly twisted face in front of her.

 ”I hate you!”

 The corrector's eyes flashed as he wiped the spittle away. He fixed the full malice of his gaze on Gûthrakha. One of his means of torment was to compel the victim to look straight at his eyes. They were like those of a snake: lidless, never blinking, never closing for an instant. A fearful fire burned in those eyes, and the pupil was a black slit to nothingness, horrible to look at for any length of time. That look chilled Gûthrakha to the marrow.

 The Corrector did not turn his gaze away from the squirming woman as he picked up a hot iron from the burning coals.

 ”Is that so?” he said. ”I must teach you better manners.”

 Holding the iron steadily, he moved its glowing head into the space between Gûthrakha's ankles. Inch by inch, he started to raise it higher. Gûthrakha's heart started to race, and beads of sweat rolled down her forehead, as she realized what the Corrector was about to do. She already felt the heat nearing her groin, when she clenched her eyes shut and screamed:

 ”I love you, master! I love you like a father!”

 The heat retreated, and Gûthrakha heard the cruel voice saying:

 ”Much better, bitch!”

 The chains holding her feet were released, then those holding her up. She collapsed onto the stone floor with a nasty thud. She lay limply there, still keeping her eyes closed. The voice spoke again in a mocking tone:

 ”Yes, you love me. You will always love me. I am your best friend and helper. Remember that! I will leave you now to ponder on it. Make sure you are in a better state of mind when I come back to release you to tend to your child.”

 A sound of footsteps followed, then the door banged shut and rattled, as the bolts were closed. Gûthrakha sobbed hard, and her tears moistened the stone slab under her head.

 

II.

 

”I wonder why you bother with this program, Mairon,” said a dark-haired woman leaning her elbows on the windowsill of a high tower room. Her beauty was only somewhat marred by her wide mouth, slightly visible overbite and a longish nose which combined gave her face a vaguely sharp, forward-leaning appearance. Staring with her deathly pale eyes into the starlit night, she bared a pair of fangs in a dissatisfied grimace.

 ”'Tis useless waste of time, I say.”

 ”Well, Thuringwethil, you say wrong,” Mairon replied calmly and leaned back in his chair in the corner of the chamber. ”It is what lord Melkor wants, and because of that alone can hardly be called a waste of time. At least not to wrong ears, unless you want to see what his displeasure looks like.”

 Thuringwethil shrugged and smiled dryly.

 ”Why, you silver-tongue, you certainly know how to convince! Very well, tell me why we should go on with this instead of telling him it is not possible? This is already the third generation of breeding, and still they are not ready! It was his idea, so he will not punish us – at least not too severely. I want to know why I and my brethren were constantly compelled to fly around the woods in the search for these newcomers and to capture them when either you or Melkor did not have time. Even now, we have to use much of our time for patrolling, in case someone escapes.”

 She turned around and put her fists on her hips. With a frown, she went on:

 ”I am not even allowed to drink from them, except for the rejects who are so few I must ration them too much. Thirst torments me at all times. So tell me, why all this toil?”

 Mairon scoffed.

 ”Your greatest fault, my dear, is that you think only of your thirst, and not of the greater whole. Our lord needs an army! These kwendi, if left alone, must come into contact with the Valar sooner or later and because of their nature will side with them.”

 ”Yes, but they are only creatures of flesh and blood,” Thuringwethil said with a sneer. ”They have hardly learned to speak yet, let alone to do battle with the likes of us. How could they threaten us or Melkor?”

”They will learn to do much more than just speak. When their souls will reach their full potential, they will be able to see much that is yet hidden from them, and the Valar can teach them even more. So, I fear the most high of them will be in time able to assail us even with only their minds. And maybe you have noticed how many of us cannot, or will not, shed their visible forms anymore? Even weak soldiers, if there are enough of them, can eventually overpower a being that is bound to a body. So, my guess is that the Valar want to use them as a sword fodder to weaken us before they themselves deal the finishing blow. So much worse for the fodder, of course.”

 Thuringwethil stroked her chin with her long-nailed fingers while she listened. When Mairon had finished, she asked:

 ”But why cannot we simply persuade the kwendi to follow us, instead of the Valar? It should be simple enough.”

 ”It should, but is not,” Mairon said with an impatient shake of his head. ”Do you think I have not tried that already? In their natural state there is something inexplicable in them, that resists and abhors lord Melkor innately. They quail at the touch of his will and will not submit to him outright if they see him as he is. So, they must be changed if we are to control them permanently. That is my task.”

”And what a dreary, dull task it must be!” Thuringwethil exclaimed. At this, Mairon laughed and replied with an eager gleam in his eyes:

 ”On the contrary! With Aulë I shaped mountains and hills, and thought that was grand. But this work, however small its apparent scale, is quite as engrossing. Just think about it! To change the very soul of a being, to shape a new class of creature... It is difficult, yes, but also gives me a glimpse into wondrous things of which I once had not an idea. Once I devised metals, now I mold flesh and minds into new forms, cast them into the shape of lord Melkor's will. It is a form of control of which I did not even dream earlier.”

 ”But is such molding not an endless toil?” the vampire said. ”You have to change them one by one, after all.”

 ”Not so,” Mairon said with a triumphant smile. ”Not anymore. You see, I foresaw that problem. The kwendi somehow have the power to multiply by their own power. So, of course I had to find a way to ensure the changes I devised would be passed to the next generation, unless I wanted to spend an eternity shaping each and every one of them by hand. I had already made some inroads towards that end, as this latest generation proved, but still the complete success eluded me. But believe it or not, now I have attained it!”

”Ah, so that was what the earlier noise and hubbub was about!” Thuringwethil exclaimed, looking surprised. ”The business with the female escapee, right? You did say she was pregnant...”

 ”She was, and the child she delivered is perfect! Gûthrakha and the other subjects in her generation are promising, but they still are kwendi in their inner being. Gûthrakha herself showed signs of occasional slipping to the original nature of her people, as have some others. But this child... he is something else already, a being of a new race. I am sure he will be prove to be just what lord Melkor and I have sought.”

 ”How can you be so sure?” Thuringwethil said with a dubious look

.”By the child's looks alone,” Mairon said and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his hands on his chest and went on:

 ”You see, the bodies and the souls of the kwendi are remarkably aligned with each other and the world. Choose the right charasteristics of both body and soul and emphasize them in breeding, pay special attention to them in training and physical procedures, and they will become permanent. With the right kind of mental shaping, eventually the subject will not even remember he or she ever was different. He gradually stops fighting the process. He might hate me in my guise as the Corrector, and hate lord Melkor, but that same hatred will actually aid the transformation. It comes from the depths of the subject's very soul and is genuinely his own feeling, so he will not resist it, but will turn it outwards. With the application of fear and pain in suitable doses, the result will be that the subject becomes wholly selfish, yet eager to escape pain by obeying orders. His best enjoyment will be inflicting on others even more pain than he himself feels.

 And that is the turning point, my friend. Having acquired these traits so deeply that they permeate his whole mind, the resistance of the subject's soul will be breached and it will be shaped anew. And as the bodily traits are heritable, so are those of the soul also to a degree. When subjects with newly molded souls conceive a child, there will be a certain colouring in the newborn's soul even from the very moment it comes into being. The upbringing that the offspring receives from the parents who have undergone my program will do the rest. Apply the effect of Melkor's will straining on them and the result is almost irreversible.

 Luckily, the progress of this development can also be ascertained easily. I understood, when looking at our lord and many of us others, that a change in the soul can effect a change in outward appearance also. The degree seems to vary widely, however, but I surmised it would certainly be plainly visible in the kwendi. Their souls need to be clothed in flesh to be truly whole, and thus those two are so tightly bound together that the progress of the program is visible in their very faces. With every generation I have seen this is true, since the subjects veer ever farther from the original features of the kwendi even as their souls are changed.”

 ”Yes, it is very clever,” Thuringwethil said. ”But I still do not wholly understand how this inheritance of the soul happens. Are the souls of the children then fragments or outgrowths of those of their parents?”

 ”No,” Mairon replied, ”or the children would be mere puppets of their parents, without wills of their own. Or so I think, at least. My theory is that the souls of the children are new creations, put to grow into fruition inside the bodies of their mothers. It is rather irrelevant for the present purpose if that inserting happens in the moment of conceiving or at some point later before the birth, even though the question is in itself interesting. This whole business of procreation is so new, and it must be studied more.

 But I am sure that the mothers' bodies are the vessels through which those new souls enter the world and in the process, the children perforce acquire some charasteristics both bodily and spiritual of both parents, since their flesh grows from that of the parents, and the soul is tied to the flesh. It is much like a pipe whose inside is greased. Pour water through it, and however pure it is coming in, it will be mixed with grease when coming out.”

 ”Now I see!” the vampire replied. ”Put enough grease in the pipe, and the water becomes an unrecognizable sludge, eh?”

 Mairon grinned.

 ”Quite so.”

 Thuringwethil paced to and fro, visibly impressed. Her mouth moved, but before Mairon could ask what she had in her mind, the vampire said:

 ”It is quite clear now. It – it is astounding! To shape a living creature like clay... It is a great thing to ponder on. But please explain to me why you have to pose both as the benevolent Mairon and the hateful Corrector? It seems to me now that the 'soft' side of your program is needless, even counter-productive.”

 ”On the contrary. Pain and fear are great motivators, but they alone are not enough. Not yet, at any rate. I had to give the subjects something to believe in, some promise of rewards if they cooperated. They must to learn to hate the pain of punishment and love the reward of the obedience. Also, I have to teach them certain beliefs to estrange them from any lingering thoughts of aligning with the Valar or of escaping to their freely roaming unmolded brethren. I cannot possibly do so by being all the time severe and cruel. That is why I started with every newly captured group appearing mostly benevolent and only gradually increasing the punishments and the fear. Besides, even in these late stages some relaxation of the pressure now and then minimizes escape attempts, and gives the minds of the subjects an opportunity to imprint the new traits firmly.

 But now, that all seems to be in the past. With careful selection of pairings from the third generation, I think I can finally produce the new creatures to whom the hatred of the Valar and the ferocity we desire come wholly naturally. So, from that point onwards we only have to let them breed. The new creature should be controllable by fear and discipline only. Very orderly, very proper. No more unexpected reactions.”

 Thuringwethil whistled softly and said:

 ”Why, I no longer wonder why lord Melkor keeps you so close to him! Your cunning is surely remarkable, as is your patience when devising this breeding scheme. I mean, did not the originally captured kwendi even die at first when you tried to make them breed?”

 ”They did,” Mairon said with a grimace. ”Whenever they were forced to copulate, they just collapsed as lifeless husks. Too many promising subjects were lost that way. Very frustrating, that was. Thus, I had to let them choose their mates freely in the first generation, and even with the second only use strong suggestion and mental pressure. That was the most difficult phase of the operation. The second most difficult one was to make them willing to hurt each other. For a while I despaired of the result.”

 ”But you succeeded,” Thuringwethil said. ”I only wonder, how you did have the time to even make a language for them. And why did you even do it?”

 Mairon thought for a while and then answered:

 ”Speech is thought, and to think is to speak. To imprint the mode of thinking we wanted, we had to devise a language for them. The original tongue of the kwendi placed too much emphasis on thing like wonder and beauty, so we had to substitute it with one that stresses obedience, hatred and hardiness. I mean, how can they think the way we want and leave thinking what we do not want, if they have a language with all wrong vocabulary and sound? Lord Melkor gave me the outline of what He wanted, and I did the rest.”

 Thuringwethil nodded thoughtfully at first, but then looked troubled and said:

 ”To go back to an earlier subject which worries me: You said the process is 'almost irreversible'. That word 'almost' sounds rather bad. So there is a possibility, that the subjects could break free and remove you and Melkor's fingerprints from their souls?”

 ”In theory, yes, at least to some degree and in individuals. After all, the innermost essence of their souls cannot be wholly altered. With the earlier generations this was a somewhat bothering thought. But reneging as a real possibility for this new fourth generation, and on the scale of the whole group? No, I doubt it. The traits they will have from birth, the conditioning they have been given and Melkor's will operating on their minds will hold them as thralls. At most, some isolated individuals will prove traitors.”

 ”That is good to hear, since I for one would not relish a horde of them descending on me,” the vampire said dryly.

 ”Have no fear,” Mairon said. ”It was a stroke of luck that lord Melkor found the kwendi before they had the chance to develop a firm way of life or a fully grown language. Thus, among our subjects there are no lingering memories or traditions of any other thing than serving Melkor. May they hate him or love him, he and his will are all they know. Also, it is well that lord Melkor has cast the shadow of his will on the whole creation. Without it, I doubt if I could have convinced the kwendi of the things I told them, or if they would have been receptive at all.”

 He smiled, as he continued:

 ”It is good to be able to rest for a while after my toils! Now it only remains to ponder on the details of further breeding. And one other, rather thorny problem.”

”Which is?” Thuringwethil replied.

”The name of the new race, of course!” Mairon exclaimed. ”They are no longer kwendi so they need to be called something else.”

 The vampire thought for a while, then said with a short laugh:

 ”How would uruk sound? It means 'horror' in their original ancestors' language. And a horror for our enemies they are meant to be. Also, it is fitting to give an ugly name for an ugly people.”

”Says she who spends half of her time looking like a giant bat,” Mairon replied with a grin.

 As Thuringwethil scoffed at the jab, Mairon went on:

 ”But it truly sounds good. Yes, uruks the new creatures shall be. Thank you, Thuringwethil!”

 The vampire was about to reply, but suddenly twitched and said instead:

 ”Ah, I feel our Lord's thought on me! He must have some task for me. As pleasant as this talk has been, I must go now. I will return to flatter your pride more at some other time.”

 She strode to the window and stepped on the sill. Hardly pausing, she leaped to the air. Even as she did it, her arms began to transform into leathery wings, and her dress into the soft fur of a bat.

 Mairon also went to the window and leaned out, watching Thuringwethil first descend in circles, then taking a course for the distant main keep on the wings of the south wind. His mind was not on the vampire, however, but on the child he had held in his arms.

 ”What a wonder he is!” he muttered. ”With his birth, I have been a midwife to a new era.”

---

Chapter End Notes

Translations of the primitive Elvish phrases:

 Poikâ, ejâ poikâ, Eliwen! Ele ejâ gälae... = Pure, ever pure, Eliwen! Look ever to light...

Magra lambê, banja lambê... = Good language, beautiful language...

  If the process described by Sauron reminds the reader of the the Lamarckian theory of the heritability of acquired traits – scientifically discredited by the later findings of Darwin –, that is not an accident. In the Tolkienian universe that kind of evolutionary concept is in my opinion practically the only way to explain the descent of Orcs from Elves, or their existence at all as a species, after the concept of evil's ”sterility” in regards to the ability of creating life was firmly established in Tolkien's mind. After all, even as the Men's fall from grace is heritable in this framework, so is the state of the Orcs (which might be seen a sorts of 'fall' for the unlucky early Elves who were captured by Morgoth). Thus, the acquired state of corruption of both the soul and the body must be heritable both in individuals and groups, or the Orcs can't exist.

 As for Sauron's role, it's purely my personal take. After reading the texts in Morgoth's Ring I have thought that Melkor/Morgoth always was too chaotic and even psychotic in his evil to be successful in the sort of long, deliberate program the creation Orcs must have been. Sauron with his love for order and organization would so be a much more likely candidate for doing the ”dirty work” according to guidelines given by Morgoth.

 The dialogue about the 'almost irreversible' nature of the Orc-making process is my personal way of solving the problem that troubled Tolkien also (and is quite relevant in more current works of fantasy): That is, the problem of a whole sentient species being described as irredeemably evil. In the context of Tolkien's universe, we must assume Morgoth cannot have such absolute power over any souls that he could corrupt them absolutely and irredeemably. That would go against the clearly established omnipotence of Eru, and also His goodness. Thus, there has to be an untouched ”corner” in the Orcish souls which would make penitence and redemption possible for them, however slim the chance they would actually take such a course. Tolkien himself toyed a bit with the idea of the possibility of Orcish redemption, so my ideas are nothing too radical. This unsullied part of the soul's core also explains the few positive qualities the Orcs have (such as loyalty to tribe, a twisted sense of some intra-group morality and the apparent ability to raise children to adulthood instead of just killing them the moment they are annoying).