Author's Note: Another one…
Disclaimer: This surely is a dream.
Déorhild
"Who is Déorhild?" Bûrzghûlum asks, as we pace about the room. I am grateful for the little walks, and for the most part manage unaided though the orc or one of the nurses is never beyond arm's reach.
I freeze, tense like a snake.
"How-how-who-?"
He raises a hand. "You spoke in the throes of a fever. You said naught but that name, and I wondered who they must be…."
Suspiciously I search his face for deception, and my glower remains after I find none.
"She was my wife."
He nods and asks no more of it and for that I'm grateful. We complete the circuit and I return to bed, sinking into the grey sheets.
"Rest, Traitor." He says my name without judgement or contempt, and sparks a blaze, because I hate it. I hate its curse. I hate the taint. The stain, the horror, of what I am-I hate. So virulently do I hate it! But it's oh so true, so terribly true-fundamentally and irrevocably true. I roll over and stamp it down deep, burying it under other thoughts, but there are no other thoughts, nor other memories.
They all led me here. What difference did it make in the end?
"I swear allegiance to Saruman."
I kneel at the wizard's feet. I kneel and knees do not like the hard cold floor. His cloak is brilliant white, as is his hair, and he watches me with fell glittering eyes. Blood drips from my hand, and from the knife blade. In blood I have sworn, and he smiles. He smiles, and his teeth grow yellow and crooked.
I wished to fly among his black birds, and I grit my teeth, grunting, gagging, and retching on the stench of melting skin and sizzling iron. Its cloying reek fills my nose, and the orc snarls in cruel delight, before I'm released and stagger to my shaking knees.
He's there before me, standing above all gossamer white-fiery eyes. I kiss a hand pale-charred black.
"What do you want, Little Bird? What price does one pay for a song so sweet?"
"I want nothing. I ask no boon."
Everything's dark, and in the blackness a monster lurks. A leviathan with a tectonic voice coils, and then is laughs. It laughs so loud and so deep. The world shakes. The earth tilts, and how heavy those eyes are, filling my head, though I know my eyes are closed and my head is bowed.
"I wish for justice. It is not all I wish, but…."
"But you fear I will refuse."
"With due respect Lord, I fear more that you'll say yes."
His eyes are fire, and so too is the house, burning, smouldering, choking on the ash of its own remains.
A woman screams- a man falls from a balustrade-the man screams-the woman screams- a shadow darts through a door.
Nowhere to be found.
The woman screams: an agonized, shrill, horrific thing.
"Déorhild."
I jerk awake at the sound of my own sobbing.