Thanks for the reviews, everyone! (And having faith that this wouldn't be a standard M-S.) I got inspired, so Chapter 2 went up pretty quickly (at the expense of my other fics, unfortunately!).
Two: The Face of Evil
For one paralyzed moment I just stood there, staring at him wide-eyed, like the proverbial deer in the headlights. A wild thought crossed my mind that maybe someone had tampered with my drink after all, only not with a date-rape drug like Rohypnol but something hallucinogenic such as LSD or peyote. What else could explain the horrific vision in front of me?
Perhaps my presence there had startled him just as much as he had startled me. I had no way of knowing, of course, but he didn't make an immediate move, and I figured that gave me my only chance. Grabbing two handfuls of bulky skirts, I turned and ran back the way I came, kicking off the useless slippers I wore after one threatened to slide off completely, almost tripping me up. Luckily my feet were still somewhat hardened from a summer of roaming around barefoot or in sandals. It was much easier to run that way, even though the ground underfoot was rocky and treacherous.
From behind me I could hear him cry out in words I couldn't understand, although they didn't sound much like the harsh speech of Mordor I'd heard in the films. But the sound was chilling nonetheless, especially when I heard other voices join his, followed soon after by the pounding of hoof beats.
What movies or books don't really get across is how frightening that sound can be, especially when you know it's generated by evil beings whose sole purpose at the moment is to catch up with you. But fear gave me extra speed, and I used that and the darkness to dodge off to one side, hoping that my feint might put them off the scent.
I should have known better. After all, these were Ringwraiths, not the local polo club out for an evening ride. The cold air seared my throat as I ran, and I coughed even as the wind whipped tears into my eyes. My feet were a mass of bruises. It was almost a relief when a gloved hand reached out of the darkness and plucked me neatly off my feet, depositing me like a sack of potatoes on the saddle bow in front of the lead rider.
Immediately he slowed, and the other four Ringwraiths came up to surround us, their shapes little more than a deeper shade of black against the rapidly falling night. A heavy hand grasped the hair at the back of my head and jerked my face up. I could make out nothing but the dark hood falling over his face -- but I knew even if the light had been clearer there still would be nothing to see.
He spoke, but I couldn't understand the words. Again, they didn't sound like the Black Speech (if that's what it was called -- trying to remember details like that in such a stressful situation wasn't all that easy), but it sure as hell wasn't English, or the common language they used in Middle Earth. Then again, how would I know what that sounded like?
With a frightened squeak, I gasped, "I don't know what you're saying."
A pause. Then a man's voice, deep and rough, sounding nothing like the thin, evil tones of the Ringwraiths in the films. "How is it you do not know your own tongue, she-elf?"
What the hell? Then I remembered the stupid ear tips that had been part of my costume. I hadn't thought they looked all that convincing, but -- "They're fake!" I protested, and reached up to pull one off, just to show him.
It wouldn't come off. And it wasn't just that I had done a killer job of spirit-gluing the damn thing down. I mean, it felt as if it were attached, like it was part of me. As if somehow, when I had been transported here, the disguise had become reality.
A wave of cold washed over me. What exactly was going on? This could still be some sort of horrible fever dream, but why the hell would I have imagined a detail like that?
With a horrible patience, the Ringwraith waited. I guess when you're immortal you have all the time in the world. Maybe he thought I was crazy or something. I didn't even know if it was the head rider who had captured me -- not that it really mattered. There were four more to take over the job if I somehow managed to slide off this Ringwraith's horse.
Finally I muttered, "I don't speak Elvish."
Another silence. Then he uttered a few more words, this time as harsh and ugly as the language I'd heard in Fellowship when Gandalf read the inscription on the inside of the ring out loud. Obviously he'd been giving instructions to the rest of the crew, since they all turned their horses and headed back in the direction of the little copse where I'd first come upon them. Once we were there, he lifted me as if I weighed nothing and slid off his horse, then set me down on the ground. The other Ringwraiths dismounted as well, and stood around me, watching like silent shadows.
This whole thing was giving me the creeps. Were they going to kill me? Question me? I suppose I presented enough of an anomaly that they wouldn't kill me outright, not without trying to get some information out of me first. Probably there weren't a lot of Elvish maidens wandering the wilds of Gondor or Rohan or wherever the hell I was.
"Who are you?" the Ringwraith asked.
"Sarah Monaghan," I replied. After all, there probably wasn't much he could do with that particular piece of information.
"That is not an Elvish name," he said.
"I'm not -- " I began, then gave up. I mean, I couldn't really blame him. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has pointy ears like an elf, well...you do the math. Boldly, I asked, "Who are you? Do you normally go wandering around the wilderness accosting lone females?"
Although he said nothing, I gathered from his silence he was somewhat taken aback. Probably it had been a while since someone had gotten in his face like that...if ever. My knowledge of the Ringwraiths was sketchy at best, but I did remember that they had once been kings who had fallen into evil, and that they probably weren't the types to have random women taking the verbal offensive against them.
"I?" he replied at last. "I am Lord of the Nazgûl, King of Angmar, she-elf. You would do well to consider who it is to whom you speak."
Well, that confirmed it. But although I was certainly still afraid, somehow it wasn't the paralyzing fear the Nazgûl were supposed to cause in mortals. Also, deep down I kept wondering whether this wasn't just some fantastic dream, some drug-induced hallucination influenced by Mike's party, not to mention all those books full of images from the films that I'd spent a lot of time studying the past few weeks as I prepped the costumes for the party. Speaking of which, it was hard to tell in the darkness, but somehow these Ringwraiths didn't look as tattered and worn as the ones in the films. Their black robes looked almost new. And I'd noticed that the Lord of the Nazgûl had grasped me with a gloved hand, but it had been a leather glove, not a spiky mail one like the gauntlet in the film.
If I were simply dreaming all this, wouldn't it have been easier for me to just re-use images from the movies? Why all the different details?
I shivered then, and it wasn't just from the increasingly chilly night air.
"Good," he said, even though I hadn't made him any reply. Maybe he was just pleased with my apparent meekness once I had learned who he really was. "What are you doing here, so far from your people?"
"I don't even know where 'here' is," I protested. "One minute I was at a party, and the next -- boom! -- dropped into Middle Earth."
The blackness within the hood seemed to stare at me for a moment, and then I heard those same harsh guttural syllables passed among the other Ringwraiths as they apparently began to discuss my situation. That sound almost frightened me more than the actual presence of the Nazgûl -- it was the verbal equivalent of nails scraping down a blackboard.
But then the Lord of the Nazgûl turned toward me, pushing back his hood. Why, I had no idea -- perhaps he had meant to frighten me with the dark empty space above the broad cloak-covered shoulders. That's what I had expected to see, what the books had described, and the films had illustrated so clearly. Or possibly the horrible gaunt face Frodo had encountered when he put on the Ring.
That's not what met my gaze, however. Despite the darkness -- now beginning to be relieved by a gibbous moon rising off to my right -- I saw the face of a man, somewhere in late middle age, with proud hawkish features and the coldest gray eyes I had ever seen. His dark hair was streaked with silver and held back from his forehead by a white metal band set with a cloudy gray stone in the center.
I stared at him for a long moment, as his eyes caught mine and held them. Then the significance of that stare seemed to get through to him, and he frowned.
"What do you see?" he asked, and stepped forward, grasping me by the shoulders. I could feel the chill of his touch right through the leather gloves he wore, the cruel strength in those fingers.
"I see you," I gasped. "How can I do that? You're supposed to be invisible...or worse."
"You see me?" he demanded. "How is this possible?"
"I don't know!" I burst out. "But I do -- your eyes are gray, and there's a gray stone in that silver band or circlet or whatever you call it that you're wearing. And there's a scar on your right cheek," I added, as the moonlight strengthened and revealed more details of his features.
Mouth compressed to a thin line, he released me and gestured for the other Ringwraiths to step forward and throw back their hoods. One by one their faces were revealed. The Lord of the Nazgûl looked to be the oldest, but I would say they all appeared to be somewhere in their forties or fifties -- or the Middle Earth equivalent. Mike had once shocked me by telling me that Aragorn was supposed to be in his eighties or something like that during the events in the books, because apparently men with Numenorean blood lived longer than regular mortals. So I had no idea how old any of these men had been when they became wraiths, but that's about what they looked like. Vigorous and strong, absolutely, but still men, not boys.
They could have been kin, with their dark hair and pale eyes and proud-boned faces. Maybe they were, in some convoluted fashion. I didn't know anything about them or their origins, save that they had been kings once before Sauron turned them. Once upon a time Mike had tried to get me to read The Silmarillion "to get more back story," but after about ten pages I just gave up. The thing was impenetrable. Mike had sworn that it got better and that there was some pretty seamy stuff in there -- he used to call it "Elves behaving badly" -- but to me it just wasn't worth the effort. Of course, I was regretting that decision now, since maybe I could have picked up some intelligence that would have helped me in my current situation, but there wasn't much I could do about it at the moment.
"Do you see all of them?" the Lord of the Nazgûl asked.
"Yes," I replied. I had the crazy impulse to add, And you're not a bad-looking bunch, either, but decided that probably wasn't such a great idea. The guy seemed to have lost most of his sense of humor over the thousands of years he'd been a wraith. Not that I could blame him.
He muttered something under his breath, but I couldn't understand what he said. It didn't sound like the Black Speech, and it didn't sound much like Elvish. Maybe it was the Numenorean he'd spoken when he was a king. I suppose it didn't matter how many languages he knew -- it wasn't as if I could understand any of them, except of course the common tongue we'd been using. Thank God for that at least. Otherwise, I would have been reduced to sign language or something.
Then his gaze shifted back to me, and something cold and appraising in those gunmetal eyes made another shiver run down my spine. "Come," he said, and grasped my wrist. Without so much as a by-your-leave he boosted me back up into the saddle of his horse, and then swung his leg over the animal and settled in behind me.
I knew better than to protest; besides, in that position he shielded me from some of the worst of the freezing night air. Shifting my weight slightly, I moved in closer to him, trying to find a spot where the pommel of the saddle didn't dig into my backside. Without comment he lifted the edge of his cloak and wrapped it around me. It was thick, heavy wool, and I burrowed into it, not caring whose it might be. At that point, I was worried more about catching cold than any possible ill-will coming from him. For some reason, I didn't think he meant me any harm -- at least, not at the moment.
The other Ringwraiths mounted as well, and the group of horses burst out of the little grove of trees, pounding away to the south. At least, I figured it must be to the south -- the rising moon lay to my left as the shadowy riders hastened across the plains. I was increasingly glad of the cloak the Lord of the Nazgûl had wrapped around me, since the air felt even colder now that we were moving with such haste.
I had been horseback riding a few times in my life, but of course I'd never ridden like this before, perched in front of someone while desperately trying to ignore how quickly the ground was passing beneath me. Those horses of Rohan had huge strides and seemed tireless -- I had no way of counting how much time had passed or how many miles we had covered, but our journey seemed to go on forever. I burrowed my head into my captor's cloak and squeezed my eyes shut against the freezing air, telling myself that the tears I could feel leaking from the corners of my eyes had only been brought on by the wind. As close as I was to the Lord of the Nazgûl, I could feel no warmth emanating from his body; it was only the heavy cloak that kept me from being chilled to the bone.
Undead wraith. That's what the books and the films said he was. But he looked nothing like the ghoulish figure I'd seen in Fellowship. And apparently he'd been as startled by what I saw as I was myself. It seemed that I could see him as he had been long ago, before he fell to Sauron's power. How many thousands of years had that been? Way too many for anyone to still look that good, that was for sure. But that didn't change the fact that the arms that held me securely in place and kept me from falling didn't belong to a mortal man, or that I could sense no trace of a heartbeat or living breath from the being who forced us to continue on into the night, until at last the faintest sliver of a reddish glow off to my left signaled the coming of dawn.
With the growing light the Lord of the Nazgûl slowed his horse, and the other riders fell in behind him. We had left the plains behind and now rode through an arid and rocky canyon that was broken only by a few scrubby-looking bushes. The landscape looked a little like some of the box canyons of Southern California I'd hiked through in my Girl Scout days, although I doubted I'd see the sprawl of the San Gabriel Valley ahead of me once we were clear of the ravine. Also, my Middle Earth geography was hazy at best, but if we were traveling south, and the terrain was becoming increasingly barren, then that probably meant only one thing.
I didn't have a chance to ask my question until the leader of the Ringwraiths called a halt to let the horses rest. It turned out that at the base of the canyon a thin stream of dark water flowed, and the animals went to it gratefully, whuffling and snorting as they drank. The riders removed their horses' saddles and bridles, then set up makeshift mangers full of some sort of grain for their mounts. In the books Tolkien had made it sound as if the Ringwraiths treated their animals brutally, and maybe they would if circumstances called for it, but it seemed I saw almost a rough affection as they tended to the horses and made sure they were comfortable. Of course, the wraiths would have a tougher time moving about the countryside if they were deprived of their mounts. No use abusing them for no reason, I supposed.
As for myself, I felt starved and cold and bone-achingly tired. I've pulled all-nighters prepping for finals or finishing a class project, but there's something about being jolted across the landscape of Middle Earth on the back of a horse that can really do a number on you. I stumbled on the rocky ground, feeling the bite of the stones through the shredded tights I wore. The Lord of the Nazgûl gripped my arm, holding me upright so that I wouldn't fall.
"Thank you," I said automatically. Then I paused, looking up at him. The harsh face was unreadable in the gray predawn light. I doubted it was any real solicitude that had prompted him to keep me from pitching face-first into the rocky soil. Most likely he just hadn't wanted to deal with any injuries that would result from my clumsiness. His wasn't the sort of face to reveal any confidences, but I knew if I didn't ask I'd just drive myself crazy with speculation. Hoping my tone was casual enough, I asked, "Just where are you taking me?"
One eyebrow lifted. "To Mordor, of course."
Damn. I'd been afraid that was what he would say...