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25. The Brink of Cataclysm
The large doors at the entrance to the great hall of the blackened citadel were pushed open with a dumbfounding clang and the Master, along with all they other Dark Elves, had his attention drawn away from his quarry. A Dark Elf made his entrance by tearing in at a top speed, his black robes flying in the air and his red eyes flashing like a torch in a frenzied gale. He ran up to the feet of the Master, revealing an unsheathed knife in his right hand. While he caught his breath, swaying, the commander's spidery white fingers gripped the sword hilt at his own hip.
"Master," the Dark Elf panted, his eyes wild with flames, "Master, there is a disturbance down at the bridge! People are trying to enter the city."
The commander leapt up from his stooped position over Arwen. "You are sure of this?" His eyes were narrowed, tiny slits of scarlet in the shadows of his hood.
"Yes, I saw their torches. There were some cries too."
"That is enough," the commander snapped, waving the messenger away. "Come," he said, gesturing forward a group of guards. "Take her away; quickly. There is not much time! We must not fail now that we are so close."
Arwen was seized by the arms and pulled away in the direction of a small doorway. "Wait!" she cried out, wriggling in their arms, driven by the reckless thought in her wretchedness that Aragorn had come to Minas Morgul.
"Wait for what?" the commander questioned her sceptically. "Wait for you to escape? I do not think so. Willing or no, you will not leave here unless we all die. You will be one of us before long." His eyes then flicked to the guards, who had paused momentarily, unsure whether they ought to remain while their master talked. "Go!" he shouted at them. "Let her know the meaning of pain before I join you."
Once he deemed Arwen to be dealt with the Dark Elf turned to the messenger quaking at his side, but Arwen strained to watch him, listening with her keen elven ears. He grabbed the arm of the messenger and he hauled him at a run to a tall thin window looking out over the Morgul Vale. His quick eyes shifted like a darting flame as he peered down at the road.
"Where are they?" he demanded, in a flash swivelling round and shaking the messenger. His red eyes bulged maniacally and he seemed to grow to a tall height as if fury fed his cruel power.
"They were there, truly!" the other Dark Elf whimpered, pointing a white-knuckled finger to the windowpane. "I saw their flame torches on the road; there was a whole group of them, on horseback!"
"Bah." The Master dropped the messenger and pushed him away carelessly, once again turning his attention to scrutinising the narrow thread which wound up to the gates of the terrible city. "Muster our kin… but do not trouble with the orcs or the rest of those Morgul-rats. I see no reason to fear for our fate this evening. This night, we shall drink the blood of our foes and once more bring to life the Dark Lord with the glorious death of that faithless elf."
With this the Dark Elf spun round and stormed towards the doorway in which the guards were holding Arwen. Recognising their freeze, his eyes scrutinised their faces until they fell on Arwen's.
"Did I not tell you to hurt her?" he cried exasperatedly after he had collected his thoughts, now rushing towards them in a frenzy. The Dark Elves hurried through the doorway ahead of him and Arwen was carried through into a huge vault, lit by green flames along all four sides. It was the High Court of Minas Morgul, its cold cruel heart. The immense ceiling lifted up to a point high above, one which was the base of the very tower which Arwen had seen on entrance to the citadel. Her lips parted in wonder, remembering the astounding signal which had blindingly lit the sky with blue-green fire before the armies of Mordor had been let loose. Then her eyes dropped down to a stone structure directly beneath it… such was its width and length and so smooth was its surface that it seemed to be a tomb, but its height, the pockets for flames to be set burning in and the absence of engravings on the top gave away that it could only be one other: an altar.
Her awe turned to horror.
As Arwen swivelled round in the arms of her captors she was seized by the strong hands of the Master and torn out of the throng, towards the centre of the huge room.
"Curse you! Spurn her, beat her!" he hissed lunging forward to hit her cheek. Arwen cowered away just in time. The crowd of Dark Elves materialised into a circular wall around her and tightly barracaded in their fury, the rising pool in which she was about to drown. Now the Master grabbed a handful of her silky hair and pulled her head back, suddenly drawing put the elven blade at his hip and pressing its shiny tip against her throat. "I would kill you now, in anger," he spat, "if I did not have some way of allaying your crimes after. But," he said, trailing the sword-point down Arwen's tensed throat, over the white skin of her chest and down her dress towards her rounded stomach, on the centre of which he rested it, "there is no way for you to atone for this."
When Arwen saw his hand fly up, the shining blade preparing to sear down, she twisted with all the strength left in her and flung her body aside with a cry.
"Come back!" he shouted, pulling her head closer and throwing Arwen's sword to the floor. "I will not let you walk free from this. Here… Elessar is possessing you from the inside… his blood now flows in your veins… this life which is his now lives within you!" Bellowing he kicked out at her stomach; Arwen screamed, oblivious now to the other strikes the surrounding Dark Elves pound her with elsewhere. She writhed, her heart in torture, blindly trying to perceive his hands and feet as they made for her stomach, and her stomach alone. Wracked in sorrow, she gradually pulled her knees towards her head and curled up, fragilely shielding her belly with her nimble hands, now broken and bleeding from the blows.
"Please…" Arwen wept, "please, hurt me, but do not hurt my child!"
A hiss of laughter rippled through the Dark Elves as they prepared to resume their punishment, but this time their commander held out his arms and silenced them.
"So this is your great love…" he murmured. "Can you not see? -your love, so renowned, is your hindrance?" He said to her, "If you were not in love, you would not be in this labyrinth. What is it about love that so entrances you? It seems to me that in the end all love turns to grief. Would you truly do anything for your love?" He fixed his unmoving eyes on hers and remained silent.
"What do you mean?" Arwen asked slowly, her words barely lacing her weak breaths.
"There is… another way. You do not have to let Aragorn be killed tonight." Arwen stared at him with her big blue eyes. "If you gave your life, you could save him."
"I…" Arwen faltered. "I do not understand…"
The Master smiled and spoke gently. "If you give us your life, we will not kill him when he comes. You live for your love, so will you die for it?"
She paused before speaking slowly. "But if I die, then I am assuming that Aragorn is sure to be killed when you meet him," Arwen said unsurely, frowning unhappily. "That is not true; so I would be resigning to the ruin of our love before its surety had come to pass."
"We know you will lead him here," the Master said to her softly, kneeling down at her side. "And no one leaves Minas Morgul dead or alive unless bidden so by us. We will not let him escape. You know why now. But we will be content if you take his place. You have a chance to save your love."
Arwen was silent for a moment. Still gazing at her wounded hands she murmured, "The only difference is whether you kill him or whether I do. If I die, then Estel's love goes with me and all his hope for the future. Without me or an heir, the kingdom of men will fall, and his life will be in vain." Her eyes sloped up those of the Dark Elf. "He will be defenceless and broken… I know then you will easily kill him." His keen eyes narrowed and brightened as he heard how she followed his own train of thought through his mind. "No, I don't believe you," she uttered, her blue eyes cold and clear.
After a brief calculating hesitation he shouted out, "Too bad!" All around the Dark Elves leapt to life from their stillness like black flames lustfully licking at their prey. Winding his arm around her bodice the commander held her tightly to him as he ran over to the altar and laid her body on the cold hard stone which glimmered in the green torchlight. Before Arwen could understand what was happening, her wrists were being tied down outstretched on either side and her feet were tied together at the foot of the great stone.
"What are you doing?" she cried out, frightened. But the Dark Elves merely laughed. She struggled against the tight bonds and anxiously glanced around, hoping that that alone would protect her vulnerable stomach. However, no one appeared to have the intention of assaulting her there for the mean time.
"You need not look so horrified," their commander spoke over the soft eager chatter. "I am doing you a favour." Arwen's terrified, incredulous questioning expression in her forlorn eyes evidently beckoned him to continue at least as coercively as a question. "By you giving us your life, you will atone for your sins against us. Do not fear, we are not wasting your life… let me remind you of the Dark Lord Sauron, who survived spiritually, a flaming wreath with the slit of his intense power, omnipresent, without the One Ring. Now, with the ring having been destroyed, all of himself that he poured into the ring has been vanquished. Yet the part of him that could survive alone is still present. A Maia as great as Sauron could not have been killed. He awaits our help. And here you will provide him with your life and the body of an elf. He will be most grateful. He will reward you greatly."
At this revelation Arwen's heart fought to beat fiercely but her insides had iced up with utter dread for what was about to come to pass, so that she felt as if she was already drowning far inside herself. She was frozen, her face white as if her body was laid in cold unfeeling snow, and her eyes were wide and black, consumed by the expectation of death and loss of all that mattered. Words choked her rigid throat and the welling tears stung and stuttered her breath. The wish beyond all other dreams in her mind was to have Aragorn embrace her and warmly whisper, tickling her sensitive ear, that this was all untrue. But now nothing embraced her except her own collapsing thoughts. This time, her love was not able to save her.
"But I shall be dead…" Arwen whispered through blue lips and she scared herself by the words she had just spoken, still unable to believe.
"Then you shall forever have the thought that Sauron has pardoned you haunting your every moment as you walk the Halls of Mandos for eternity."
Arwen quaked and her eyelids fluttered shut for a moment. The image of this horror filled her mind and she wrung her heart in her overwhelming sorrow. Like a wavering candle-flame the child inside her wriggled around, uneasy at his envelopment by his mother's grief and fear. When she felt this, the tiny movement of warmth within her cooling body, Arwen's head dropped feebly to the side and her tears began to pool on the surface of the stone altar. Only now did she begin to comprehend the cruelty of death, and by imagining the end of a life so newly barely begun Arwen realised the bitterness of the cutting short of her own immortal existence.
She blinked and through her long dark eyelashes, now wetly stuck together, she caught sight of the reflections of many shadows moving about in the trails her tears had left on the stone. Weakly she moved her neck and saw the Dark Elves gliding around like phantoms, circling like the Nazgûl entrapping their prey. Their words faded into hissing voices, sizzling as if she was already overwhelmed by the green flames they bore and were setting around the feet of the altar, removing them from their niches in the walls of the great chamber. Through a flurry of tears, suddenly the great hall of Minas Morgul descended into a great blackness save for the wreath of green tongues licking the edges of the altar, tempted by her trembling flesh. The Dark Elves became all but imperceptible from their deep shadow except for their pallid skull-like faces and the blazing red eyes, eyes red as rubies in light of their glorious catch, red as blood in lust of her who was to be sacrificed.
Before her, Arwen saw the Master, stepping out from the sphere of eternal shadow which flooded her sight until his form was raised up above the thriving fire and he raised his arms up so that his black cloak appeared as two massive wings of bats. His pupils dilated as they fell on hers, quivering. "But how?" Arwen murmured, half to herself, half to him. She did not want to know how she was to meet her end, and yet to not know was impossible. Her sight became swamped by the emerald flames, reaching up for the cavernous roof which sucked out all life and air from the citadel, and then as her line of sight lifted directly up above, she realised why she was laid as she had been. Green sparks sputtered way up in the peak of the ceiling, towering far away, but precisely above her heart.
"No…" she began to murmur, shaking as the fear of death drew closer to her. She could not twist out of her bindings, nor silence the crisp voices of the Dark Elves, nor soften the cold hard stone beneath her body, nor escape from the overriding power of the black Master. Arwen had not even the strength to turn her mind back to look over the path which had led her to this bed, no will to defend her thoughts against the cruel intoxicating words of the Dark Elf, no determination to break the ropes and pull herself away. Her radiance was darkening; her grace was dimming, her elven nature fading, and the hold she had on life was already slipping.
The only thing which remained of her, Arwen Undómiel, in that moment was the undying memory of Aragorn which would never be lost, even in death. His love would never forsake her, and as she wept, it was for the loss of him, he who was her life, and she in turn his. She would never hold him again in her gentle hands, never wash her soft gaze over his loving face, never bring him the life which they had both strived for. Her soul was wracked with grief and the glassy tears in her eyes reflected back to her the memory of his own eyes, grey and strung with fear, which she had last seen, so long ago. Had he known? Did she have any choice to escape? She knew she could not free their love now, but how could she bear to walk for eternity with her betrayal of her one true love hanging over her, shrouding her sight, squeezing her conscience, crawling with guilt and winding round her neck, forever blazing in her eyes.
"No…" she whimpered. "Please… please…"
The world as she knew it shrunk back and, once more, she felt like a little elfling girl, innocent and vulnerable, frightened of entering a life where everything she had so far known and loved was to be lost forever, and all she desperately yearned for was the presence of a loved one. "Please," she begged. Her desire for Aragorn was even greater than her hold on life, now sliding between her fingers like the paper wings of a blue butterfly. "Tolo, Estel…"
There was a tremendous roaring, like thunder tearing the heavens apart, while great boulders pound down the mountain and the great waters of the oceans pour down to flood the valley. A sword of silver fire materialised in the pinnacle above like a bolt of lightning, twisting with flames whose sickly luminous green light encompassed everything. The only other thing Arwen could see was him, Sauron, his red eyes in the face of the Dark Elf, the slits staring straight into her soul, laughing at her lost fate and his regained. His voice uttering the Black Tongue of Mordor was mingled with those of the Dark Elves, crawling all over her and intoxicating her thoughts. A cold stabbing power greedily reached out to snatch her heart, the one match for her love, the love stronger than all else in Middle-Earth. Nothing was ever more beautiful and yet so sad than Arwen's broken heart, shattering like glass on the surface of a blue lake of tears lamenting her grief.
Above this, like the voice of a nightingale singing as twilight falls in autumn in the woods of Lothlórien, Arwen heard softly, as if a light rain of stars was falling upon her, "Namarië."