Into the West: the Defiance of Ar-Pharazôn
Ar-Pharazôn stood looking to the west as the funeral procession past below, winding toward the House of the Dead. Another friend gone, and this morning he found another gray hair one more wrinkle, another sign that his years were fast approaching there end.
"I am mortal," he whispered to the echoing silence. "I will die, just like him. Just like them all."
"That is not a fact, milord," came the sickenly sweet voice of Sauron. Sauron's answer to his ponderings startled the king. He had thought himself alone. "there are ways…" As Sauron stepped from the shadows light fell on his continually young and handsome face, for one instant a flicker of jealousy and dislike danced across the kings face, but he did not speak.
"The Firstborn," Sauron continued, "the Firstborn have life, should their body fail them they are cared for, yet you, the children of the sun and morning are not." His words filled the chamber, like shadows, clinging to the corners and playing tricks on you mind. "Why are the Secondborn always left out? Forgotten, abandoned, alone."
Music wound its way up to the window, the sad song of death; sad but not bitter, full of a life well lived and hope for the unknown. But how bitter it sounded in Ar-Pharazôn's ears. He could feel the time he was allowed slipping past him like water over the falls, nothing he could do to stop it. Ar-Pharazôn shut the window blocking the sound.
"You have said that kings should not fear death, that the king should not have to face it." Ar-Pharazôn spoke in the new stillness, "you say that the Valor can be forced into giving us life…"
"You," Sauron replied, "are the only king who could make them. You could sail to their lands bringing the fire and sword. You could snatch back from them the life that is your long denied right. The choice should have been yours…"
Ar-Pharazôn looked back to the west, "so you have said before, and still I am not sure…"
"If you do not go soon milord you will join your father in death, where ever that may be. You have no son, no children, not even a daughter. No heir. You wife longs for the day she oversees your burial that she may bare another's children. She is barren only by choice. Surly you know all this… What holds you back from what should be yours?"
Sauron stopped speaking and let the silence deepen only to have it be broken by the tolling of the death bell, calling the number of years the dead had walked among them. With each low tone Ar-Pharazôn's face grew more firm, and pale, as if the bell rang for him, as the last note filled the room he spoke.
"Truly you are wise my friend, I have seen to much death, I have buried too many friends. I know not what became of them, beyond the edges of this world. It is time for their king to save them, one man chose that we should die, this man wants life. Call my captain, man the ships, we sail west."
So Ar-Pharazôn, the Golden King, wrought his own doom and the drowning of Númenor.