Revelator by Lilith

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Cormallen

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3019 T.A.
March, sometime after the 25.
The Field of Cormallen 

Voices continued to float in and out of her dreams. Some she knew. Some she did not. Some reminded her of those gone long before.

“He said she pulled him out.” The voice was Olorin’s. The tone was surprised.

“Why?” She. was unfamiliar with this voice. It reminded her of one she had heard years before but she was unsure of which one it was. She thought, vaguely, that it was important. It would give her information she needed to know if she could but remember. But she couldn’t. Hers had been a long existence. She had forgotten more than she remembered, and she was tired, so very tired, now.

“I don’t know,” Olorin replied. “But she did.” She heard the wonder in his voice and then the world became grey and then dark.

***

Time had passed. She did not know how long. It might have been minutes or hours or days. 

“Why are you trying to heal her? You know who she is.” This voice was impatient. It was the voice of a mortal.  

“Everyone deserves the opportunity to heal.” It was the second voice, the one that reminded her of someone, someone she’d known, someone she couldn’t remember. She felt water trickle over her face, smelt the scent of something, something green, something living. It reminded her of the smell of Arda newly made or of the forest of Neldoreth where her sister once dwelled or of Eregion in the spring outside the city near the foothills when the trees were in bloom, when the rivers bubbled with the spring thaw, and when she was not alone.  

She was alone now. She was always alone now.

She had chosen that.  

No, he had chosen that for her, for them both.

She tried to lift her hand and push the cloth away.

“Don’t,” the voice said. “It will help.”

“Smells of dirt,” she said.

“Yes,” the voice said, a touch of laughter in it, “it is from the earth so I suppose it would.”

She stopped trying to fight him and allowed him to bathe her face.

“I will bring you something to drink,” the voice said. “Then you must sleep again. You are very hurt. Far more than I think you know.”

She turned away from the voice.

“The injuries are deeper than your body,” it continued, “and have been with you for more years than I know how to count. It will take much longer to heal and will require a desire to heal. But you are not beyond hope.”

Fool, she thought. She had not had hope for more years than she could count. But there were hands upon her and they were gentle. One lifted her head and held a bowl to her lips. She drank. Water trickled down her throat clear and cool.

“Do you think you can drink more?”

She nodded.

She heard the voice ask someone to bring a cup. The person to whom the voice belonged held her gently, one arm behind her back, her head against his shoulder. He brought a cup to her lips.

“It’s broth,” the voice said. “Concentrated to be of more benefit to you. Will you try it?”

She lifted a hand and touched the cup and the hand of the one who held it. That hand trembled slightly beneath her touch.

She drank.

***

Later she felt hands lift her. She felt a damp cloth gently drag along her body and then felt someone wrap her gently in fine and soft material..  

She heard the same voice as before. “She is hurt. Beyond my understanding. Perhaps beyond my ability to heal.”

“Sometimes the damage is too great.” This voice was Olorin’s. “Sometimes it depends upon the willingness of the patient to be healed.”

“Does she want to be healed?”

“I don’t know,” Olorin answered. “She would also have to believe that she could, that grace would be extended to her.”

“I see,” the voice she didn’t know said and she felt a damp cloth run gently over her face. “She is not what I expected.”

“No,” Olorin said, “she wouldn’t be.”

“Is she what you expected?”

“Yes,” Olorin replied. “No.” He paused. “I loved her once, Estel. She was my friend. She was more gifted than you can imagine. I want ...”

“What do you want?”

“For her to be the blessing she might have been.”

“Is that what she wants?” the one named Estel replied. “I feel only a bottomless well of grief and of pain and of despair. I hadn’t expected that.”

“I know,” Olorin replied.

“Had you?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” Estel said. “I am sorry.”

“For whom?” Olorin asked.

***

There was a gentle touch in her hair. Someone was combing through her hair, carefully teasing the tangles out. She held up a hand and tried to push the person, whoever it was, away.

“Hush,” the voice said. It wasn’t Estel’s or Olorin’s, but there was a kindness in it. “it won’t take long and you’ll feel better.”

That was familiar. She remembered doing this herself for another so very long ago. She remembered her own voice, murmuring gently, as she ran a comb through fine silver hair and loosed the tangles from it. “Let me,” she had said as she soothed the weary and tired girl, “Let me. It won’t take long, and I promise you’ll feel better.”

The girl had let her, settling quiet against her. She had been gentle and trusting. But the girl was gone, lost foolishly and wastefully, a causality of another one of her plans, and she could not follow. The girl would not have wanted her to follow anyway. Not anymore.

She was tired. She let this other person, whoever it was, comb her hair, and, as they plaited it, she wept and did not try to prevent it.

***

This time, when she woke, the voices were clearer and her senses sharper. She felt blankets beneath her and smelled the scent of fresh earth and new grass.  

She felt the sun upon her face.  

“Mairen?” It was Olorin again.

“Yes,” she answered.

“How do you feel?”

“As if I’d been carved in two. I expect that is how I should feel, given what happened.”

Olorin laughed quietly, “Yes, I suppose so.”

“Why am I here?”

“Why did you go to the mountain?”

“You know why,” she said. “I felt the Ring.”

“Why did you take the Ringbearer from the mountain?”

“How do you know I did?” she asked. “Perhaps we fled, all of us?”

“He told me,” Olorin replied. “So did Sam. They’d not have survived without you. They do not understand. Neither do I.”

She did not reply.

“Why, Mairen?”

“Do you want to imagine that there is hope for me after all?” she responded. “You know what they’ll do to me. Don’t give yourself hope for something that cannot be and that I do not want.”

“That wasn’t my question, Mairen,” Olorin replied. “Why did you take them from the mountain?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she answered.

“I am willing to try.”

“He told me that there had been enough death,” she answered. “I decided that he was right.”

“Frodo told you that?”

“Frodo?”

“The Ringbearer, Mairen. His name is Frodo.”

“Frodo Baggins,” she said. “No, it was not he.” 

“Then who?”

But she turned her head and then her body away. Olorin did not try to force an answer from her, but she felt his fingers lightly touching her shoulder. 

***

“Are you there?” This voice was different, younger in some ways.

“I am,” she answered. “Who asks?”

“I do,” he replied, and she perceived the Halfling she had seen before her, fallen to the ground in the Sammath Naur, clutching his bleeding hand. He had no index finger on his right hand. His hand matched her own as he matched her. She had no index finger on her right hand and she had not been able to resist the lure of the darkness nor more than he could resist the call of her Ring.

“And you think you may compel me?”

“I am not trying to compel anyone,” the Halfling answered. “I could feel you, and I thought I would see if you could hear me.”

“And what then?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I needed to know.”

“I see.”

“Did you not wonder?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “but, once, it was not unusual for me to speak with others this way.”

“Why did you pull me out?”

“Perhaps I thought I might kill you.”

“If that’s what you wanted you might have pushed me into the fire,” he answered.

“True,” she said.

“Why?” he asked. “You knew why I was there.”

“Too late,” she said, “but, yes, I knew. I also knew that you couldn’t.”  

She felt the sharp pain within him.

“No one might have expected you to,” she said. “I made it to withstand the wise, the very greatest among the Eldar. I doubt they might have resisted it there. That is why it consumed so much of my strength.”

“Why?”

“The one who created the rings with me was very strong,” she said. “So very strong. It took so much of what I had to try to bind all of the works we made to me.”

“And did you?”

“Yes,” she said. “But only to this end, apparently. He was right after all, it seems. I did not want him to be right.”

“How so?”

“He once told me that there had been enough death, and that all of what I had created and all of my plans and hopes would be for naught if it resulted in more,” she replied. “He was right.”

“And you realized this?” the Halfling said.

“Yes.”

“It seems a little late,” he observed.

“Oh, yes, she replied. “It is more than three thousand years and millions of deaths, including his own, too late. But, in the end, he was right. I gambled. I lost and for what?”