Written for the challenge at the Fireplace, hosted by Flame Rising.
"The darkness is tonight," the lord says with perfectly ambiguous punctuation. Míriel shudders, almost theatrically, steps sideways, still facing him, and he steps with her. It isn't quite a dance, though it's very elegant; they turn a circle and Míriel backs onto the open balcony. Slender, listless fingers grip the cold railing and Míriel swings herself up.
"You do endanger yourself, O Zimraphel."
She smiles, winks, and says bitterly: "My name is not Zimraphel. Sauron."
The lord takes a step towards her, winks back. "Tonight my name is not Sauron, Queen. If it so pleases you, I'll not even be lord Mairon. You do endanger yourself on that railing." He is perched on the threshold between the room and the outside.
"And who are you, then, lord?" She doesn't want her voice to shake, but she can't tell whether it does.
"I am Annatar. Annatar of Andor."
It doesn't take much translation, but Míriel's words fall with deliberate disjointedness. "Lord – of – Gifts. Indeed. Tonight I am Míriel."
"Míriel, how sweet, how inauspicious," the Lord of Gifts says. He sets the air before him shimmering suddenly, and it takes on some rapid-turning forms and writhes dramatically, then settles. It's a silver-haired – elf-maiden – slim and not very tall and ghostly pale.
She doesn't smile. She's fairly disoriented.
Annatar says, "She was Míriel. She died, of course, accompanied by great misery. She was just a sort of spirit at the end – mostly she haunted herself. Others, too."
"You seem to assume that lore has been lost in the land of the Star, Annatar," Míriel says, swaying back a little, precariously, her voice raw, as if she felt she should be crying. Then she's somewhat shocked, a sort of delayed shock as she looks at the wraith-like figure before her, purely astounded. "What is it?" she breathes.
"Do you think this Míriel will illustrate a point, perhaps?" he says, gesturing with fingers like the slender white vines winding up the wall below. "My Queen Míriel?" The lord Annatar is grace and fairness incarnate (except that he isn't, Míriel thinks absently, vague echoes of the cries of the Faithful drifting aimlessly in her tired mind), and the way he joins her – on the railing – is as skillfully fluid as the smoke of Nimloth, and also tastes of terror. The two of them balance together and Annatar answers.
"She isn't. She's a captive little thrall that I borrowed as a fair illuminating illustration."
Míriel is not quite sure what he means by this. Annatar seems to enjoy the riddle he's weaving immensely – he is the Deceiver, though. She knows this. Deceiving Numenor to its failure, it seemed.
So what Deception is he playing now?
"Illustrating the less-than luster the name you cling to so desperately possesses. Pathetic."
"She was Fëanor's mother." Surely there was greatness in that, whatever the Spirit of Fire had wrought?
"You've left many fires to put out, Míriel." He doesn't sneer. The Lord of Gifts is above sneering. Every word that drips from his fair lips of molten gold, a forged-red – and what words he could probably use, if he felt like it! – is carefully inflected as immutable fact.
The elf suddenly speaks, in a moaning, musical voice. "Perhaps I did. . . .There are fires in the distance . . . what are they?"
"They are the fires of the Faithful," Tar- Míriel replies bitterly. She bows her head. She cannot see the blackened dome clawing at the sky of Armenelos in the starless night, nor does she want to, but she shows what little faith she can to the Elendili.
"They are sacrifices to Melkor, Giver of Freedom, as the Men of Numenor worship His great darkness." The Queen is beyond tears, beyond conversation, beyond proving herself right in her words with the Deceiver; the shreds of agony at the burning of Nimloth dissolved in a hopeless numbness.
"You lie," she says faintly, her head still bowed.
Annatar laughs a little then puts a companionable arm around her shoulders, and she is slow and sluggish to shrug it off. "Poor Queen, you have such little, feeble defiance left in you, so deep is your despair. You have no more spirit to speak hatred at even my simplest words. You have lost all will, poor Míriel, you have no strength left, even more downtrodden than ill-fated Hurin. You've fallen," he whispers, touching her cheek mockingly, other hand gesturing, "you've failed. Just like her."
The other Míriel, the shining silvery spirited ghost, is balanced with Elvish grace upon the railing; she bends and turns and asks softly, "And am I fallen?"
"You would have spent forever weeping bitterly over your tapestries had I not brought you out now to amuse my Queen," Sauron replies venomously; his voice turns with whirling swiftness, sweet to harsh and back again, until Tar- Míriel wishes she could close her ears, her mind. Wishes that she didn't half believe his deceptions.
"You aren't," she seethes at the Elf, "you aren't anything at all; you're a spell, a trick, an illusion –"
The silvern Míriel places her hand over her heart and seats herself upon the railing, facing not the chamber but the outside, the dread last vigil of what is doomed. "I'm not," she whispers sorrowfully, "I'm not; I'm truly Míriel. He took me, you see – this is truly Míriel – he brought me here – he does almost anything . . ."
"Stop deceiving me!" Míriel cries, but the Elf doesn't flinch. The Queen leans back from the Elven-lady desperately and falls back against Sauron's arm.
"Can you not let me grieve loss without distracting me?!" she asks, screams quietly, disgust streaming across her features. "The land is won. The people are won. The house of Elros Tar-Minyatur is won, so please you! I am won." She is tired of his deception and she knows there's no way out. There isn't . . .
"But you aren't, and even a high lady of the Elves cannot win you, for all that she is truly mine, for all that I brought her here that I might win your spirit for the Darkness, Queen. You cling without anything to truly cling to. Not all is lost. There are ways out. Tell me why you do not accept the gifts of Annatar."
Míriel swallows harshly. "What gifts have you offered? What have you given? Death, hatred, despair, downfall. You feed the children of Men darkness despite ourselves. You've given us no gifts but these."
"On the contrary. I give freedom."
Lady Míriel Serinde swings herself onto the roof and begins to climb it (whether to distance herself from her captor or for his illusory amusement the Queen cannot quite tell). The two on the balcony railing watch this for a moment, and the Queen of a sudden follows suit.
"Freedom to live long, live forever, to posses the world as is the right of the children of Men. To be rich, to be masters of all you desire. And do you not desire this freedom, Míriel? Only turn to my master, darkness shall give you freedom; the darkness is tonight."
Míriel knows how she must answer, but she wonders whether she has vehement conviction or none at all. "I do not need your freedom. I have death. Death is my freedom. Already I am free, so I do not need your gift."
Sauron, with infinite grace, pulls himself to the roof, too. "I," Míriel continues, "could die right now, and who could stop me?"
"Indeed? You speak with your lips but not your heart. Are you hopeless enough to wish for death?"
Another illusion; Sauron becomes a tall, fair, golden-haired Elf with solemn eyes, climbing the roof, higher upon it even than the Elven Míriel, looking down upon the Queen, voice mocking.
"Do you yet have hope? You have truly fallen, O my Queen. Think you that I shall be punished for what I have wrought, that your cousin shall be done justice, that all the evil that Numenor has become shall be redressed?"
"I would," Míriel says through clenched teeth, still reaching, still climbing
"What of you, Míriel; you've failed too. Shall the Valar wreak death upon Numenor and spare her Queen? Evil has happened under your watch. Death shall take you and you care not, but tell me that you could endure being unforgiven forever. The Valar neither forgive nor forget. You are fallen. All Men are."
Míriel tries not to hear, though the pale Elf-maiden looks vaguely interested. "What form are you now beguiling me in?" the Queen asks tiredly.
"A fell, cruel light brightens the Elven-lordly Annatar's eyes, "Finrod Felagund," he says, relishing every syllable. He knew Men; foolishly, he loved them. He couldn't sing a song to rival mine; he was weak; I cast him to my dungeons and one of my wolves killed him. Perhaps your end will be more bitter even than his . . ."
"And did not Beren escape, did not he and Luthien bring forth a Silmaril out of Morgoth's pits, does its light not still shine upon Earendil's brow?" Míriel is gasping for breath (all of them are nearing the summit of the palace), but her words hold more fervor now, as if she's finally almost putting heart into what she says. She does truly believe some beliefs yet.
"Does Earendil's flame," Sauron nearly spits, "still shine upon Numenor? The Darkness is greater and blocks out any light. No, indeed, you'll deny that, but how can Míriel deny that she cannot see the star? The Valar have shielded its light from you, you cannot see it, you are not worthy of seeing the light, Míriel, you are fallen. Do you now despair?"
"The Star . . . is called Gil-Estel."
"Hope is stolen from you," Annatar says, his fair hair streaming past his shoulders as he smiles widely. "Shall you not die with all the high people of the race of Men?"
All three figures are near to the pinnacle of the roof, where there is a flat space, round and small. The Elven Míriel reaches a slim arm to help pull the Queen over its lip; Annatar needs no help.
"Estel is that hope that all shall turn to the joy of the Children of Iluvatar. I cannot see how; I am blinded. But I have that hope still. I'll cling to it; it is my gift, my own, and you cannot take it from me however you try." Sauron is still smiling even though Míriel feels as though she's winning the whole debate. "It is Eru's gift to me. I shall not despair."
"Good, crafty Míriel, playing Andreth to my Finrod. Perhaps I shall bring him here; he should be proud." The air is shifting again, and takes the same shape as Sauron wears; or that he wore, for when Míriel looks up from the Elf-lord before her Sauron is once again handsomely fell as he ever was; tall, fair, hated.
"You won't be forgiven, Míriel. Numenor may drown and you with it. Though you cling with your hopeless hope to Eru you are in folly, for He even should not forgive you, if even he exists. You have failed all." He begins to pace the perimeter of the tiny circular pavilion above Armenelos.
"Some must fail." Queen Míriel says, and even she is not sure whence the words sprang to her mouth. But she forges on anyway, "Did not all you master's servants rejoice when Voronwe's ships were drowned and forgiveness denied to them by the Valar? And yet did that not pave the way for Earendil and his Silmaril to shine in the sky and redeem the children of Iluvatar?"
"You speak well, Lady," Finrod says quietly (and the Queen is now doubting if the two Elves are Sauron's illusions or some things in the world had newly run to wonderment), but Sauron keeps pacing about them.
"If Numenor drowns, if I am failed and not forgiven, it shall be turned to some light, some good, some new stars and new hopes. It shall; it must. We fall to rise. You can try to take us, but you cannot win our hearts."
"Truly?" Sauron says amusedly. "I will show you where you are wrong. My lady Míriel Serinde is masterful with the loom, and she shall spin out some sequences of the hearts of Men falling to my hand, will she not?" Míriel nods her pale head.
And Finrod puts a hand upon the Queen's shoulder which she does not shrug away.
And suddenly there's a wide loom flickering, and wide, shining threads flowing away into the darkness. And Míriel begins to weave a scene, her hands in blurs of blurs, to fast to be thought about. So fast the scene moves, and the Queen watches it play out as if it's happening right before her eyes.
There is a Man, tall and dark-haired and fair in the way of the Men of Numenor, standing on a hill. There is a madness on him, horrific, directed at a small figure before him, like to the light of Sauron's eyes.
She cannot quite make out what he is doing, but it is plain, more than plain, that there is evil behind it.
And the smaller figure disappears. For a moment the Queen thinks the weaver has slipped, but no, it's truly gone from the scene. And for long agonizing moments, the evil still moves the Man, and Míriel fears that the evil is in his heart, has become part of him, that he has failed and all is lost.
But the madness is shaken off of him, and she can see the awful remorse upon the Man's face, and that he feels the pain. There are tears, in his eyes, on his cheeks.
The scene shifts, fabric, or whatever it is, rippling, and the Man is suddenly fighting, two small figures behind him, a hundred fell beasts before him, and he is fighting desperately, without hope.
Except her hope.
He slays them, one after another after another, arrows tearing into him, but he keep fighting, and Míriel knows that this is his redemption. This is his glory, the glory of hope and of all men.
And when he dies she cries for him. And Míriel stops weaving, and there are four figures standing upon the roof of the palace in Armenelos.
"That was it," Finrod says, smiling.
Sauron's expression is unfathomable. "Go then and find your death, then, my Queen. Go call out to Eru; you'll still die.
"You haven't lost yet though, and neither are you yourself lost," Míriel Serinde says.
The Queen, Tar- Míriel looks back upon the tapestry, and the Man She knows the wave is coming; she knows the terror of being the one to fail. Maybe she knows hope.
She says to the Man in the tapestry ,"If I knew it would end this way, I never would have told you."