Disclaimer: Not mine. Tolkien's. And many, many thanks to Brad Dourif for creating such a wonderful Grima!
This one's for you, April-chan.
She was making that drink again when he entered, quietly, as was his fashion, and unobtrusively. Anyone else, even the ever-watchful White Lady, would not have heard him, but she knew every nook and cranny of her room and marked his entrance as it disturbed the air. She said nothing, though; instead she merely waited for the kettle to begin hissing, and then plucked down two mugs and poured them in, adding a generous heaping of leaves and powders to the hot water. Milk, he noted, a luxury in these times, went into the one she turned and passed to him.
"It's late," she said quietly, turning in her chair to face him and cupping her drink in both hands to warm them. He stood in front of her for a bit, holding the warm drink and contemplating flight. "Oh, do sit down. If you were going to leave you'd have done it before I gave you your cup." He sat down. She always had had the uncanny way of speaking his thoughts before he'd realized he'd thought them.
"I had thought you would be asleep," was all he could think to say. He knew her better than that, though, and she knew he knew her better. He took a sip of the drink to cover the moment. It was warm, almost uncomfortably so. He was so used to being cold.
Cold and uncomfortable. Born in the normal fashion, he had been hale and hearty for a whole fortnight before his body had betrayed him, catching the fever that left him on the brink of death for two years. He had been abandoned by his family, at least so he presumed, for who would want such a deathly child in their midst? Raised and passed from kind hand to kind hand until he had grown into boyhood, crooked and pale and most often cold and shaking. Boy had grown to man, still no better liked, often viewed with suspicion as a possible plague carrier, or at the very least someone whose seeming was so foul as to not warrent company.
Women and men alike shunned and abused him. He had no idea why this one was so different; perhaps she, too, had been abandoned. He knew little of how she came to lose her sight, except that it had been in the grip of a fever. This he could understand. Yet she seemed not to suffer from her lack of vision, acquiring a sort of foresight to compensate. She always seemed to anticipate his presence, at any rate. "You knew I was coming?"
"I thought to make some chai in case you were wandering the halls, as is your usual habit." She said it patiently, as though they hadn't had this conversation a dozen times before. She leaned back in her chair, almost curling her feet under her heavy skirts to warm them, although it was warm enough in the small room.
Despite the gloomy interior of the rest of the keep, despite the fact that the difference didn't matter, her room was somehow warmer and better lit than any other room. Torches lit every corner, and tapestries woven with golden threads caught and reflected the light. In addition to that, though, they kept the room warm, as did the fire she always had roaring in the fireplace. He still didn't understand how or why she did it, any of it, all of it. The floor was sunk in carpets so that his feet made no sound when he entered, but also they warmed them... a sensation almost entirely unknown in the great stone edifice. Everywhere in this room he was insulated, warmed, and lit. It was at odds with everything else he had known in his life, and yet he came here, night after night after night.
"Thank you," he said, at a loss for anything else. She smiled a little, a faded smile that nonetheless seemed to brighten the room and light up her unfocused, pale blue eyes.
"You are most welcome, always, as well you should know." She laughed and took a sip of her drink, so disconcerting yet so tempting at the same time. Then she paused in the act of setting her cup down. "Something is troubling you... I can hear it in your breath. Have your two lords come to odds at last?"
The words echoed.
Have your two lords come to odds at last?
He startled, staring at her empty eyes with his own sunken yet amazed ones. How had she known... could she know? What had he done, what had he said that had told her? Had someone else told her? Who guessed... was it Eomer? That dull-witted lackey... had he somehow deduced from his half-formed suspicions and told her? He forced himself to calm; perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps she was making some esoteric and twisting comment that was innocent despite the seeming shrewdness. "My... two lords?"
"Come, Grima, you have never taken me for a fool, do not begin to treat me as one now. Your king, Theoden, and your lord, Saruman. What goes on between you and them that troubles you now?"
She did know. His blood chilled, though some would have said it was ice that coursed through his veins already. He felt himself gaping like a landed fish. "How... how do you know?"
"I hear whispers, names come to me on the wind, and people will say things around a nameless, silent woman, as though lack of speech also denoted a lack of hearing. Although I only suspected until you confirmed just now that there was indeed something to know."
Grima looked shamefaced and irritated with himself all at the same time. It was one of the oldest tricks, inducing a confession in a man by pretending to knowledge one did not have. He should have known better. He hung his head and sighed heavily. "You have my life in your hands, then, for Theoden-king," and he spoke the title mockingly, "may be weak, but his men of Riddenmark and the bratling Eomer's Rohirrim would have my head from my shoulders before the last word left your lips."
"Well, then," she said, more crisply than he would have thought the conversation warrented, "It is fortunate that I have not told them, is it not?"
Grima jerked his head up, stared at her, agape. "Then why...?"
She wrinkled her delicate nose. "Oh, don't be ridiculous. I don't approve in the slightest of what you've done, selling your soul for the slightest graspings of approval and power. But I also do not approve of hounding a man to fear and death. And besides, Eomer and the Riddenmark are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves." Left unspoken was the thought that he was not, a sentiment that he would have objected to a few minutes earlier.
Without a single idea in his head of what to do next, Grima sat there, staring at the woman who was calmly sipping at her hot drink, as though they were speaking of the weather or the next year's crops.
"Grima," she said, and he started almost in fright. "Grima," she said again, more gently. "Your chai will get cold."
Slowly, he raised the cups to his lips, almost half afraid she had hidden some sort of poison in it. The drink was as sweet as ever, usually delicious and warm, but tonight it gave very little comfort. He watched her as a man might watch a snake reared to strike; an odd position, considering how often before he had been called such a creature.
"Grima..." she said gently, her voice like a soothing balm to his frayed, nearly shattered nerves. "I do not invite you here, night after cold and restless night, to threaten you or harangue you. Those thoughts are farthest from my mind. But the castle is cold and dark of late, and I can feel the weight of every one of the years spent in this castle upon me each night. This place has become a prison, a dank and dreary tomb for the dying, the dead, and those too foolish to know they belong to either."
"I want companionship, Grima, nothing more. Someone to talk to and share my tiny fortress of light and warmth against the cold and the darkness. Some small conversation, stilted and forced as it may be, and a voice besides my own in here. Singing becomes wearisome when the only audience is oneself."
There wasn't much the pale man could say to that. She had never, in all the time he could remember knowing her, said so much at once to anyone, much less admitted half of that to anyone, much less to him. It gave him an odd warmth inside, and frightened him more deeply than any threats or curses could have touched.
And still he sat, and drank the cup, and wondered what would happen when Saruman came to claim the Horse lands.
This one's for you, April-chan.
She was making that drink again when he entered, quietly, as was his fashion, and unobtrusively. Anyone else, even the ever-watchful White Lady, would not have heard him, but she knew every nook and cranny of her room and marked his entrance as it disturbed the air. She said nothing, though; instead she merely waited for the kettle to begin hissing, and then plucked down two mugs and poured them in, adding a generous heaping of leaves and powders to the hot water. Milk, he noted, a luxury in these times, went into the one she turned and passed to him.
"It's late," she said quietly, turning in her chair to face him and cupping her drink in both hands to warm them. He stood in front of her for a bit, holding the warm drink and contemplating flight. "Oh, do sit down. If you were going to leave you'd have done it before I gave you your cup." He sat down. She always had had the uncanny way of speaking his thoughts before he'd realized he'd thought them.
"I had thought you would be asleep," was all he could think to say. He knew her better than that, though, and she knew he knew her better. He took a sip of the drink to cover the moment. It was warm, almost uncomfortably so. He was so used to being cold.
Cold and uncomfortable. Born in the normal fashion, he had been hale and hearty for a whole fortnight before his body had betrayed him, catching the fever that left him on the brink of death for two years. He had been abandoned by his family, at least so he presumed, for who would want such a deathly child in their midst? Raised and passed from kind hand to kind hand until he had grown into boyhood, crooked and pale and most often cold and shaking. Boy had grown to man, still no better liked, often viewed with suspicion as a possible plague carrier, or at the very least someone whose seeming was so foul as to not warrent company.
Women and men alike shunned and abused him. He had no idea why this one was so different; perhaps she, too, had been abandoned. He knew little of how she came to lose her sight, except that it had been in the grip of a fever. This he could understand. Yet she seemed not to suffer from her lack of vision, acquiring a sort of foresight to compensate. She always seemed to anticipate his presence, at any rate. "You knew I was coming?"
"I thought to make some chai in case you were wandering the halls, as is your usual habit." She said it patiently, as though they hadn't had this conversation a dozen times before. She leaned back in her chair, almost curling her feet under her heavy skirts to warm them, although it was warm enough in the small room.
Despite the gloomy interior of the rest of the keep, despite the fact that the difference didn't matter, her room was somehow warmer and better lit than any other room. Torches lit every corner, and tapestries woven with golden threads caught and reflected the light. In addition to that, though, they kept the room warm, as did the fire she always had roaring in the fireplace. He still didn't understand how or why she did it, any of it, all of it. The floor was sunk in carpets so that his feet made no sound when he entered, but also they warmed them... a sensation almost entirely unknown in the great stone edifice. Everywhere in this room he was insulated, warmed, and lit. It was at odds with everything else he had known in his life, and yet he came here, night after night after night.
"Thank you," he said, at a loss for anything else. She smiled a little, a faded smile that nonetheless seemed to brighten the room and light up her unfocused, pale blue eyes.
"You are most welcome, always, as well you should know." She laughed and took a sip of her drink, so disconcerting yet so tempting at the same time. Then she paused in the act of setting her cup down. "Something is troubling you... I can hear it in your breath. Have your two lords come to odds at last?"
The words echoed.
Have your two lords come to odds at last?
He startled, staring at her empty eyes with his own sunken yet amazed ones. How had she known... could she know? What had he done, what had he said that had told her? Had someone else told her? Who guessed... was it Eomer? That dull-witted lackey... had he somehow deduced from his half-formed suspicions and told her? He forced himself to calm; perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps she was making some esoteric and twisting comment that was innocent despite the seeming shrewdness. "My... two lords?"
"Come, Grima, you have never taken me for a fool, do not begin to treat me as one now. Your king, Theoden, and your lord, Saruman. What goes on between you and them that troubles you now?"
She did know. His blood chilled, though some would have said it was ice that coursed through his veins already. He felt himself gaping like a landed fish. "How... how do you know?"
"I hear whispers, names come to me on the wind, and people will say things around a nameless, silent woman, as though lack of speech also denoted a lack of hearing. Although I only suspected until you confirmed just now that there was indeed something to know."
Grima looked shamefaced and irritated with himself all at the same time. It was one of the oldest tricks, inducing a confession in a man by pretending to knowledge one did not have. He should have known better. He hung his head and sighed heavily. "You have my life in your hands, then, for Theoden-king," and he spoke the title mockingly, "may be weak, but his men of Riddenmark and the bratling Eomer's Rohirrim would have my head from my shoulders before the last word left your lips."
"Well, then," she said, more crisply than he would have thought the conversation warrented, "It is fortunate that I have not told them, is it not?"
Grima jerked his head up, stared at her, agape. "Then why...?"
She wrinkled her delicate nose. "Oh, don't be ridiculous. I don't approve in the slightest of what you've done, selling your soul for the slightest graspings of approval and power. But I also do not approve of hounding a man to fear and death. And besides, Eomer and the Riddenmark are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves." Left unspoken was the thought that he was not, a sentiment that he would have objected to a few minutes earlier.
Without a single idea in his head of what to do next, Grima sat there, staring at the woman who was calmly sipping at her hot drink, as though they were speaking of the weather or the next year's crops.
"Grima," she said, and he started almost in fright. "Grima," she said again, more gently. "Your chai will get cold."
Slowly, he raised the cups to his lips, almost half afraid she had hidden some sort of poison in it. The drink was as sweet as ever, usually delicious and warm, but tonight it gave very little comfort. He watched her as a man might watch a snake reared to strike; an odd position, considering how often before he had been called such a creature.
"Grima..." she said gently, her voice like a soothing balm to his frayed, nearly shattered nerves. "I do not invite you here, night after cold and restless night, to threaten you or harangue you. Those thoughts are farthest from my mind. But the castle is cold and dark of late, and I can feel the weight of every one of the years spent in this castle upon me each night. This place has become a prison, a dank and dreary tomb for the dying, the dead, and those too foolish to know they belong to either."
"I want companionship, Grima, nothing more. Someone to talk to and share my tiny fortress of light and warmth against the cold and the darkness. Some small conversation, stilted and forced as it may be, and a voice besides my own in here. Singing becomes wearisome when the only audience is oneself."
There wasn't much the pale man could say to that. She had never, in all the time he could remember knowing her, said so much at once to anyone, much less admitted half of that to anyone, much less to him. It gave him an odd warmth inside, and frightened him more deeply than any threats or curses could have touched.
And still he sat, and drank the cup, and wondered what would happen when Saruman came to claim the Horse lands.