Chapter Three: Sun On The Simbelmynë
Disclaimer: JRR Tolkien and New Line Cinema own everything.
A/N: Before Saruman became desperate to obtain the One Ring he might have plotted a more subtle, ironic downfall of Rohan in which the House of Eorl succumbed to its own folly.
3014 – Five years before the Three Hunters come to Edoras with Gandalf
A man could hoard such a pretty thing all his life without once looking at it, or if he dared his soul to be re-enamoured of its beauty (and vice) he should not let crooked thought threaten to sell it for any price. Nor buy it – were it offered to him. Yet cunning spirit might twist the purpose of another, if its purpose was innocent to begin with. To corruption. The cracked, black coal that was the palantir glowed and pulsed a smoky cloud across its sooty surface. Gríma swallowed. 'Lady Éowyn.'
'You desire this woman?' The white wizard's baritone rumbled through the high-ceilinged chamber.
'Well, no, my lord,' said Gríma, selective of the pieces upon the chessboard of this dangerous play, 'I do not desire …' Éowyn's smile glittered, blooming into a grin, infectious with radiance. Plum-coloured lips strained to form their own beam; as a child mimicking a much-loved elder as tribute. Do I not?
Observing the wretched little man's tedious obsession was more an act of patience than fascination. Saruman greatly desired to pay this spy a dowry. Once broken, once sold. The palantir revealed more of Éowyn's joy and Éomer stepped into the sphere. The king's nephew lifted his sister into his arms amid his delight. The paper-thin skin split, spilling blood over the curl of Gríma's lip. 'Do you not?' asked the wizard. 'You see things, Master Gríma.'
'I do.' Then more fiercely, 'I do! That brigand, that serpent! He usurps her love and she is afraid of late. So afraid.' His face contorted in pain; he touched his translucent fingers to his lips. Gríma regarded the smudge of diluted red with a surprised frown and bit the wound. 'I would go to her, but he speaks ill of me. He poisons her against me.' He lapsed into mumbled banter, punctuated briefly by fond recollections of a younger Éowyn. 'She would sit for hours in her uncle's knee as I told stories of old Éothéod and Scatha. She delighted in the most gruesome details even when Théoden did not. I would tell them to her afterwards at bedtime. Éomer, that little brat, was always jealous of her laughter. And so she must be always sad. Unless he should be her sun –'
Saruman drew him back from gnawing, biting bitterness. In his manicured hand he held up a stem of Evermind. 'Many are the ill chances of this world, Master Gríma, or the next. For mortal men.'
Stare as he might with peculiar interest at the unimaginative flower, Gríma did not understand. The wizard was disappointed. 'They sprout where dead men rest.'
'And care not for rain.'
Wry and twisted by the ironies of a life-age of the earth, it was not fair to call Saruman's smile a smile at all. 'Because it is a weed. When it grows on burial mounds men do not see it for a flower. Yet the bright eyes stretch away from the earth and seek reprieve in the sun.'
Subtle as a snake were his words. Clever, too, and Gríma was afforded the understanding only because he had guessed near the mark when first he encountered Éowyn's sorrow. It was older than her and bound to her brother's war-mongering death-wish. A child could not impersonate such deeds of emotion unless they be of childish design, and they were not. 'What should I do?'
'Let it live out its design and grow. You shall be her sun.' So bright that maybe she will wither before her time.
TO BE CONTINUED