A/N 8/5/2015 - this chapter, as well as the first five, have been revised. All have had scenes lengthened, or changed, or new ones have been added in to aid in the telling of the story. Thank you to all who have read and followed this story! It has been a wonderful journey thus far.
Your love entered me…my lady
into the cities of sadness
and I before you, never entered
the cities of sadness
Husam of Umbar.
"Here's a live one!"
"Remember to take his blade."
"Wait - sir! It's a woman!"
At first, light.
The heat of the sun warmed her face, intruding onto her darkness like an unwelcome guest. She blinked slowly, trying to make sense of the whiteness.
And then, pain.
She groaned and closed her eyes again. Her body screamed, her limbs on fire.
The smells felt like an assault. There was the air, lighter than the heaviness she was accustomed to. Then... herbs? Something floral, something green. She wasn't used to green. She knew white, the colour of the desert sun. She knew gold, for the braids in her hair and the sweeping, unforgiving sand. Blue, she'd seen before during rare glimpses of the sea. But green... She shouldn't know green.
With a start, her eyes opened. Blurred images slowly came into focus. A small room, white stone walls... Sparse furniture, a dresser, a bedside table... A chamber, she decided. A window with the curtains opened to the bright sun. A soft bed.
She shrank back, startled when her head hit a wooden bed head with a loud thud. She'd slept on furs for weeks and her stomach heaved at the unfamiliar feeling of sleeping above the ground. Her fingers gripped around her body. Where was her scimitar? Her chest plate? Even her light leather boots were gone, the blades hidden inside them absent.
She let her hands brush over her familiar scarlet tunic before running over her hair, nodding in an attempt to reassure herself as she felt her warrior braids. A quick look down confirmed that she still wore her loose, black trousers, though her headscarf and veil were both gone, as was her cloak.
Her face was clean; somehow the grime and blood that she remembered covering her had been wiped away. Her heart pounded in her chest as she struggled to remember how she had come to be in the room – everything was a blur, from the ride to the Pelennor to the events afterward.
Soft footsteps shook her out of her thoughts. The door opened with a loud creak and she jumped to her feet, letting out a hiss of pain as the fire intensified at her chest. A head of grey hair poked through the small opening.
"You're awake," an old, female voice said harshly in the common tongue before the door was quickly shut again. She heard a heavy bolt slide into place.
Where am I?
Footsteps came more heavily now down the hall outside her door. She hastily stepped behind the bed, putting the soft space between her and the newcomer.
A tall, dark haired older man stepped through the door, shooting her a weary glare. His eyes ran over her before stopping at her heaving chest. "I need to examine you," he muttered as he closed and bolted the door behind him.
She shrank back against the wall, her hands balling into fists. One last defense, then.
"Don't try anything. We know who you are," he edged toward her with his hands spread in the air. "I will not hurt you," he said gruffly and opened his vest slightly to show her the lack of weapons. He pulled a pouch from his belt and emptied it in front of her, laying out a number of different herbs. He produced a bowl and water from the table beside the bed. "I need to see to your wound."
She frowned and felt about her chest. Her eyes widened as her fingers found a slight dip below her collarbone that pulsed. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she deliberated but the man's calm actions convinced her and she undid the top three buttons on her tunic with shaking fingers.
The man pounded the plants and water together. He closed the distance between them when he'd finished, exaggerating his moments as he dipped his fingers in the paste and waved them in front of her face. "This has got to go on it. Close your mouth so you don't scream."
Her eyes narrowed. A warrior from Haradwaith would never need to be told such childish instructions, having long mastered the art of owning the pains of war. She bared her teeth in defiance instead, opting to grind her molars together as he dabbed on the ointment.
He stepped back and wiped his fingers on the hem of his tunic. "That attitude will do you no good. You're alive because of the good will of the King. If that good will goes, so do you."
Her breath caught in her fault. King? Good will?
"What King? Where am I?" she asked with a hoarse throat and the man's face was still for a moment as he studied her face keenly. He had kind eyes, she noticed – grey and wrinkled at the corners, as if he had spent years laughing. His expression softened and he placed his hands on his hips.
"You are in one of the Healing houses, in the lower city."
"The lower city? What city?" she turned and for the first time, she realized how familiar the land stretching out before her was.
"Minas Tirith," he answered.
"And what King do you speak of?"
The man breathed in deeply and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "The King of Rohan."
The memories came back to her suddenly, as if a wave crashing on her soul.
Father!
She moaned, digging her nails into her cheeks.
"Father! Father!" she cried out to him in her own tongue. "Where is his body?" she screamed at the man in hysteria. Not waiting for his answer, she stumbled past him, forcing the door open and fell into the hall.
"Father!"
Her limbs wouldn't obey her, scrambling their way down stairs, tripping through doorways.
"Father!"
On and on she ran, ignoring the burn in her chest as she followed the strange cobbled streets in a winding, downward spiral. At last she reached what would have been great gates, but now looked like a hollow gash in the thick, stone wall. She didn't stop, though soldiers in shining silver armour shouted and waved their hands about. She raced through the space, pushing her weary body out onto the hard, dry fields that lay below Minas Tirith.
She lay there for a moment, on the unforgiving ground. The fields were silent and empty. There were no weapons strewn over the dry grass, no ripped tunics or fallen helmets. She choked on her own tongue as her eyes raked over the flat land, finding no shallow mounds that the men of Harad always made to bury all killed in the battle, whether friend or foe.
"Father?" she whispered into the nothingness.
"The Black Serpent was buried," the healer's low voice behind her dragged her kicking and screaming back to the present. "To respect our own people, he was buried outside of the city walls, away from the battle site."
She pushed her palms against the ground and forced herself to ignore the pain in her chest as she stood.
"In the end," she replied, "all men will fade into the blackness, leaving the world as equals. You realise not your own fate if you believe you have done well by your people to separate us, even in death."
Her voice was laced with the venom only the daughter of a fallen mighty leader could summon, though the man did not even flinch.
"Take me to my father," she commanded.
After a long moment, Bergil the Healer walked steadily around the walls of Minas Tirith, pausing often to allow the woman limping behind him to stay in view.
She had been brought to him after what had now been named the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. He had initially refused to treat a soldier of the Enemy, but the guards had instructed him to treat her as well as he could. While he knew not her name, judging by the similarities between their armor and the snake like pendants they both wore, she had been called the daughter of the Black Serpent. It hadn't meant anything to him until the Houses of Healing in the city were overflowing with men, who had told of a Chief leading the Southrons that rode a horse as black as night, who had been killed by the valiant King of Rohan. He knew now that the woman dragging herself across the fields behind him was the daughter of this long dead man.
Together they reached the mountains beside the White City, where any of the Enemy who had not been retrieved by their kin as they fled had been buried in a large dug out grave. The woman's green eyes grew darker with each step, until it seemed that they were as black as the coarse kohl that rimmed them.
He reached out an arm to stop her as they neared the end of the grave.
"He is there," he said gruffly. Enemy or not, he had no desire to see the grief of a child over her father. As a healer, he had seen enough grief in the last fortnight than he had in his life. He gestured to her to go on ahead and moved to stand out of her line of sight.
Bergil had been a Healer for many years now, but he had heard nothing like the fierce screams that the wind rushed to his ears. As he turned to watch, he saw her as if mad – her braids whipping around her in the wind as she collapsed onto her knees, beating both the ground before her and her own injured chest. She screamed in hysteria, repeating the same word in Haradraic over and over again in the middle of powerful sobs.
He could only guess the word she was howling into the winds was the one that would haunt many children throughout the lands after the recent battles: father.
They stayed there for what seemed like hours, her lamentations lasting long after the sun had begun its' descent.
When the stars made their appearance, the woman took a handful of the sand covering the grace and wiped it over her face, rubbing it against her skin. She whispered a final prayer and rose shakily to her knees, ignoring the fresh blood that dripped down her chest from her wound opening.
"I'll need to see to that again," the healer muttered when she limped into view and she raised her head in surprise.
"I did not expect you to remain here."
He swallowed, clearly uncomfortable. "Too many have mourned their dear ones. Too many have mourned alone."
She nodded. "May you be rewarded for your kindness," she said softly, the Westron words twisting in her mouth as she translated the common Haradraic saying.
He held out an arm. "You'll need to get back inside. The King knows you're awake now, he'll be wanting to see you sometime in the coming days."
She held onto his shoulder, leaning on him more than she would admit. "How long was I asleep?"
He studied her face for a moment before answering. "Ten days."
She was well practiced in the art of hiding emotions and so the only evidence of shock was a slight falter in her step, her face ever a blank mask.
"Will you tell me what has passed, healer?"
He huffed as they walked past the strong walls, wondering for a moment how it was that many were still intact.
"The King will discuss it during your meeting," he responded.
She said nothing but let go of his arm as they neared the city gates. The guards bid them to pause for a moment at the sight of her, her body covered in dirt and blood, but her gaze was enough to silent any questions.
They climbed the slope towards the Healing Houses of the lower City. The streets were still teeming with refugees and a part of Bergil hoped she could see the damage her people had so carelessly heaped on the White City. He glanced toward her as they walked against the sea of people that parted when they caught sight of her, their hatred shining on their faces. In the face of such revulsion, her closed off expression seemed to crumple before his eyes. At first he believed that he had caught her in a moment of weakness, but not once did the haggard look leave her.
Her forehead was creased, her mouth turned down. Her face was covered in dried tears from her earlier show of grief, and she looked hopeless, as if the sheer weight of the destruction added to her sadness.
It was not something he had expected to see on the features of female warrior who had ridden out to end the Free Peoples of Middle Earth.
.
.
.
Author's Note:
Quote at the beginning is an excerpt of "The Epic of Sadness", a poem by Nizar Qabbani.