Disclaimer: Tolkien's stuff -not mine. Sauda, Arnaya - all mine!
Chapter 5: Unexpected
As flawless beauty rarely exists in nature, it is consequently something very intimidating. It manages to scare us more than ugliness ever could, because it makes us realize our own imperfection. Perfection is a like fen fire. It leads us on a perilous path. We think our feet walk over solid ground, but in reality it is mud, the surface of a swamp. We sink in, drawn deeper and deeper to the bottom of the pit by invisible forces named doubt and fear. Their icy fingers a clawed around our ankles and hold us in a vicelike grip, unwilling to let us go until their work is finished.
Everybody who ever cast a brief look into Sauda's face knew that feeling. Her beauty was perfection in every imaginable way. No sculpture or painter ever managed to produce a work of art that could ever equal or surpass her enchanting sight. The curve of her lips, her white teeth as sparkling as pearls, her skin as milky white as polished ivory and her beautiful hair, black as ebony - an unflawed masterpiece of creation. Her face was ageless and youthful, though it had seen the coming and passing of decades and centuries.
Many had loved her and despaired, because of the coldness of her heart, which had only twice experienced true and complete love. She had been disappointed once and from that point every feeling in her had died, at least she thought so. Until one day something very unexpected had happened to her. She had discovered something about herself, which she thought she wasn't capable of feeling: the love of a mother.
One day she had found a little baby girl, or maybe it had found her, she couldn't tell. The child had only smiled had her, her chocolaty brown eyes sparkling at her warmly and she had momentarily felt a brief moment of utter peacefulness. She had taken the baby in without having to think about it twice and adopted her as her daughter. Sauda had taught her everything she knew, making sure that knowledge would protect her from the bad she had had to experience herself. She did it with only the best intentions, because she loved her little brown eyed angel. But unfortunately Sauda wasn't aware that her heart had been poisoned by hatred and that this venom was now invading daughter's mind. All her feelings of resentment were directed towards one person and focused on a single task - destroying the life of that man and those around him, starting with the thing that meant most to him, his friends and his life- task. Her daughter became her disciple, her soldier on a crusade that had started ages ago. She had been an eager learner. She was always reliable and managed to live up to her mother's high expectations. Up until this moment, because she had disappeared.
With each passing day Sauda grew more restless and now she had reached the point when she couldn't stand the nagging uncertainty any longer. She had to find out what had happened to her beloved daughter. Her slender, gracile hand baled to a fist. Her long sharp nails digged into her flesh, but she didn't feel anything, but the worry for her only child, even when the blood trickled down her arm.
~
Gerod peered curiously through the small opening in the heavy wood door that permitted the guards to check on their prisoner every once and a while. The witch hadn't moved an inch since the elf had brought her back to her cell. She just sat there in the dim twilight, her eyes starring at some point in front of her unblinkingly. Her behaviour could best be described as eerie. The guard shook his head and returned to his duty.
Little did he know of the war that raged inside of Arnaya's head, of the confusion that had overwhelmed her. She had always known who she was, what her convictions were, what was right and what was wrong, but know she began to doubt her own judgement. It was as if the sharp outlines that defined her personality had disintegrated and left nothing but a confusing, shapeless mess of feelings, the foremost of them being helplessness. All the pieces of her soul had been shattered and she didn't know how to put them back together. What was right and what was wrong? A few days ago she would have been able to answer this question without hesitation, but now even those two concepts seemed alien to her mind.
Where had all those values and believes gone to which her mother had raised her and she had believed in for all her life? Now everything was different. Arnaya began to question those ideals and they couldn't withstand her close examination. They, together with her whole world, crumbled before her eyes, vanished into thin air like phantoms. Maybe those ideas had been nothing else but illusions that had tricked her all along.
She wanted to scream at her mother and tell her that she had lied to her, that the man she was supposed to hate was worshipped by a whole city out of free will. That his friend was kind, patient and gentle elf who refused to give up even on a lost chases as she was. That she had sent her out to kill somebody who loved and was loved back return. A man who had worked hard for his dreams and probably didn't deserve death.
Arnaya felt completely alone and helpless. She shivered and suddenly noticed that she was freezing, sitting on the cold stone floor. With a strange fascination she cocked her head and stared at her wiggling toes which were slightly bluish because of the cold. It didn't matter anymore. The hurt inside her soul was so overwhelming that nothing else mattered anymore.
She blinked the tears away that threatened to fall down her cheek and suddenly a very disquieting thought shot through her head. It was so disconcerting that it even managed to snap her out of her trance like state. Her mother would come for her. Yes, that was the only fact there was absolutely no doubt about it. And her coming would mean the end of Minas- Tirith.
~
"Prince Legolas, you look like something was bothering you? Legolas? Legolas!"
Said elvish prince snapped out of his thoughts and his eyes briefly searched the dinning table for the person who had addressed him. His gaze finally fixed on Eowyn who looked at him from across the table with a frown on her beautiful face.
"Thank you for your concern, Lady Eowyn. But it is nothing," he murmured weakly at which the young woman gave him a pointed look.
"Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking. You seem to be elsewhere with your thoughts. Gimli begins to think he finally got the better of you because you never disagree with him anymore, which I also think to be highly unusual. So don't tell me it is nothing," she raised her eyebrows. Gimli was lucky involved into a vivid discussion with the hobbits about tobacco, so he didn't hear her comment. Their little group had gotten to know each other quiet well in the past weeks and everybody had gotten used to the constant banter between the dwarf and the elf.
She was definitely right with the assumption that his thoughts were elsewhere these days. No matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, the acquaintance with the young witch did not leave him unfazed. She hadn't shown any reaction to their little tour through Minas-Tirith, which didn't mean that she didn't feel anything. He knew her well enough to know that she was able to mask her true emotions expertly.
The elf noticed that Eowyn was still looking at him expectantly and remembered guiltily that he still owed her an answer, but he never got to that part. The huge doors of the dinning hall were suddenly pushed open and a woman with long, tangled black hair, clad in shabby looking clothes stumbled in. All conversation, which had filled the hall only moments before, seized immediately and all eyes were fixed on the intruder. It was Arnaya. She was breathing heavily. They didn't have to wait long and only seconds later a red-faced guard stormed in. He immediately positioned himself next to her and took her slender arm in a firm grip, so that she couldn't escape him anymore.
Aragorn threw his napkin on the table and looked from Gandalf to Legolas with a questioning gaze in his eyes. As both of them couldn't answer his unspoken question, he raised to his feet and his voice resounded in the silent hall, "What is this commotion about?"
"My apologizes, King Elessar, but she was behaving like a mad woman. We were afraid she would hurt herself if we didn't bring her to you," the guard said, his head bowed respectfully while he spoke. He had twisted the truth a little bit trying to mask his incompetence, because originally he had only wanted to bring the witch to a superior, but halfway from the dungeons to their destination, she had escaped him and sprinted off in the direction of the dinning hall as if Sauron himself was chasing her. The guard silently swore to himself that something like this would never happen to him again.
"And what is it you wanted to talk to me about, witch?" Aragorn addressed Arnaya with a raised eyebrow.
"I came to warn you. She's coming," she said panting heavily, trying to catch her breath. After all she had run through the entire palace to get here.
"Who is coming?" the king asked impatiently.
"My mother Sauda," Arnaya answered him. "After I didn't return to her she surely got worried. Now she his coming to free me and punish those who imprisoned me."
At the mention of the name Sauda, Legolas, who observed the whole scene attentively, noticed a strange expression flit over Gandalf's face. The elf wondered whether the wizard knew something about that person. Maybe he had met her before on one of his numerous travels through Middle-Earth. It was even highly probable that his assumptions were right, because a powerful and, in addition to that, evil witch, would probably not escape the old wizard's attention. Due to Gandalf's extraordinary wisdom and age, a sheer measureless knowledge had to be stored in the wizard's mind, but he only gave away as much information as he himself thought right to give.
"Why should I believe you, when you tried to kill me only days ago? How did that sudden change of heart come about?" Aragorn asked with narrowed eyes.
When Arnaya answered him her voice sounded honest and sincere. "If I apologized to you, would you believe me?" she paused and looked at him briefly before she continued, "My apologies cannot make undone what has already happened. I don't expect any mercy or forgiveness, because I don't deserve them."
"I only ask for one thing. Please, let me explain why I was acting as I did. I was thinking that I was doing the world a favour that I was killing a tyrant," the assembled guests gasped in surprise, "But in the past few days I came to discover that what I had been told, might not be true. That lies have kept me from knowing the truth," she threw Legolas a brief glance.
"I don't know you, King Elessar. I don't know what type of man you are, but I do know that your people love you. The people's favour cannot be won by treating them badly. That's why I cannot hate you any longer. I may not trust you and I may not be your friend either, but I don't wish that anything bad should come upon you and believe me the arrival of my mother would be something extremely bad."
"Let's assume I believed you, what would you suggest we should do?" Aragorn asked with raised eyebrows.
"Let me go," Arnaya answered. "This way she probably wouldn't come for you."
Chapter 5: Unexpected
As flawless beauty rarely exists in nature, it is consequently something very intimidating. It manages to scare us more than ugliness ever could, because it makes us realize our own imperfection. Perfection is a like fen fire. It leads us on a perilous path. We think our feet walk over solid ground, but in reality it is mud, the surface of a swamp. We sink in, drawn deeper and deeper to the bottom of the pit by invisible forces named doubt and fear. Their icy fingers a clawed around our ankles and hold us in a vicelike grip, unwilling to let us go until their work is finished.
Everybody who ever cast a brief look into Sauda's face knew that feeling. Her beauty was perfection in every imaginable way. No sculpture or painter ever managed to produce a work of art that could ever equal or surpass her enchanting sight. The curve of her lips, her white teeth as sparkling as pearls, her skin as milky white as polished ivory and her beautiful hair, black as ebony - an unflawed masterpiece of creation. Her face was ageless and youthful, though it had seen the coming and passing of decades and centuries.
Many had loved her and despaired, because of the coldness of her heart, which had only twice experienced true and complete love. She had been disappointed once and from that point every feeling in her had died, at least she thought so. Until one day something very unexpected had happened to her. She had discovered something about herself, which she thought she wasn't capable of feeling: the love of a mother.
One day she had found a little baby girl, or maybe it had found her, she couldn't tell. The child had only smiled had her, her chocolaty brown eyes sparkling at her warmly and she had momentarily felt a brief moment of utter peacefulness. She had taken the baby in without having to think about it twice and adopted her as her daughter. Sauda had taught her everything she knew, making sure that knowledge would protect her from the bad she had had to experience herself. She did it with only the best intentions, because she loved her little brown eyed angel. But unfortunately Sauda wasn't aware that her heart had been poisoned by hatred and that this venom was now invading daughter's mind. All her feelings of resentment were directed towards one person and focused on a single task - destroying the life of that man and those around him, starting with the thing that meant most to him, his friends and his life- task. Her daughter became her disciple, her soldier on a crusade that had started ages ago. She had been an eager learner. She was always reliable and managed to live up to her mother's high expectations. Up until this moment, because she had disappeared.
With each passing day Sauda grew more restless and now she had reached the point when she couldn't stand the nagging uncertainty any longer. She had to find out what had happened to her beloved daughter. Her slender, gracile hand baled to a fist. Her long sharp nails digged into her flesh, but she didn't feel anything, but the worry for her only child, even when the blood trickled down her arm.
~
Gerod peered curiously through the small opening in the heavy wood door that permitted the guards to check on their prisoner every once and a while. The witch hadn't moved an inch since the elf had brought her back to her cell. She just sat there in the dim twilight, her eyes starring at some point in front of her unblinkingly. Her behaviour could best be described as eerie. The guard shook his head and returned to his duty.
Little did he know of the war that raged inside of Arnaya's head, of the confusion that had overwhelmed her. She had always known who she was, what her convictions were, what was right and what was wrong, but know she began to doubt her own judgement. It was as if the sharp outlines that defined her personality had disintegrated and left nothing but a confusing, shapeless mess of feelings, the foremost of them being helplessness. All the pieces of her soul had been shattered and she didn't know how to put them back together. What was right and what was wrong? A few days ago she would have been able to answer this question without hesitation, but now even those two concepts seemed alien to her mind.
Where had all those values and believes gone to which her mother had raised her and she had believed in for all her life? Now everything was different. Arnaya began to question those ideals and they couldn't withstand her close examination. They, together with her whole world, crumbled before her eyes, vanished into thin air like phantoms. Maybe those ideas had been nothing else but illusions that had tricked her all along.
She wanted to scream at her mother and tell her that she had lied to her, that the man she was supposed to hate was worshipped by a whole city out of free will. That his friend was kind, patient and gentle elf who refused to give up even on a lost chases as she was. That she had sent her out to kill somebody who loved and was loved back return. A man who had worked hard for his dreams and probably didn't deserve death.
Arnaya felt completely alone and helpless. She shivered and suddenly noticed that she was freezing, sitting on the cold stone floor. With a strange fascination she cocked her head and stared at her wiggling toes which were slightly bluish because of the cold. It didn't matter anymore. The hurt inside her soul was so overwhelming that nothing else mattered anymore.
She blinked the tears away that threatened to fall down her cheek and suddenly a very disquieting thought shot through her head. It was so disconcerting that it even managed to snap her out of her trance like state. Her mother would come for her. Yes, that was the only fact there was absolutely no doubt about it. And her coming would mean the end of Minas- Tirith.
~
"Prince Legolas, you look like something was bothering you? Legolas? Legolas!"
Said elvish prince snapped out of his thoughts and his eyes briefly searched the dinning table for the person who had addressed him. His gaze finally fixed on Eowyn who looked at him from across the table with a frown on her beautiful face.
"Thank you for your concern, Lady Eowyn. But it is nothing," he murmured weakly at which the young woman gave him a pointed look.
"Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking. You seem to be elsewhere with your thoughts. Gimli begins to think he finally got the better of you because you never disagree with him anymore, which I also think to be highly unusual. So don't tell me it is nothing," she raised her eyebrows. Gimli was lucky involved into a vivid discussion with the hobbits about tobacco, so he didn't hear her comment. Their little group had gotten to know each other quiet well in the past weeks and everybody had gotten used to the constant banter between the dwarf and the elf.
She was definitely right with the assumption that his thoughts were elsewhere these days. No matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, the acquaintance with the young witch did not leave him unfazed. She hadn't shown any reaction to their little tour through Minas-Tirith, which didn't mean that she didn't feel anything. He knew her well enough to know that she was able to mask her true emotions expertly.
The elf noticed that Eowyn was still looking at him expectantly and remembered guiltily that he still owed her an answer, but he never got to that part. The huge doors of the dinning hall were suddenly pushed open and a woman with long, tangled black hair, clad in shabby looking clothes stumbled in. All conversation, which had filled the hall only moments before, seized immediately and all eyes were fixed on the intruder. It was Arnaya. She was breathing heavily. They didn't have to wait long and only seconds later a red-faced guard stormed in. He immediately positioned himself next to her and took her slender arm in a firm grip, so that she couldn't escape him anymore.
Aragorn threw his napkin on the table and looked from Gandalf to Legolas with a questioning gaze in his eyes. As both of them couldn't answer his unspoken question, he raised to his feet and his voice resounded in the silent hall, "What is this commotion about?"
"My apologizes, King Elessar, but she was behaving like a mad woman. We were afraid she would hurt herself if we didn't bring her to you," the guard said, his head bowed respectfully while he spoke. He had twisted the truth a little bit trying to mask his incompetence, because originally he had only wanted to bring the witch to a superior, but halfway from the dungeons to their destination, she had escaped him and sprinted off in the direction of the dinning hall as if Sauron himself was chasing her. The guard silently swore to himself that something like this would never happen to him again.
"And what is it you wanted to talk to me about, witch?" Aragorn addressed Arnaya with a raised eyebrow.
"I came to warn you. She's coming," she said panting heavily, trying to catch her breath. After all she had run through the entire palace to get here.
"Who is coming?" the king asked impatiently.
"My mother Sauda," Arnaya answered him. "After I didn't return to her she surely got worried. Now she his coming to free me and punish those who imprisoned me."
At the mention of the name Sauda, Legolas, who observed the whole scene attentively, noticed a strange expression flit over Gandalf's face. The elf wondered whether the wizard knew something about that person. Maybe he had met her before on one of his numerous travels through Middle-Earth. It was even highly probable that his assumptions were right, because a powerful and, in addition to that, evil witch, would probably not escape the old wizard's attention. Due to Gandalf's extraordinary wisdom and age, a sheer measureless knowledge had to be stored in the wizard's mind, but he only gave away as much information as he himself thought right to give.
"Why should I believe you, when you tried to kill me only days ago? How did that sudden change of heart come about?" Aragorn asked with narrowed eyes.
When Arnaya answered him her voice sounded honest and sincere. "If I apologized to you, would you believe me?" she paused and looked at him briefly before she continued, "My apologies cannot make undone what has already happened. I don't expect any mercy or forgiveness, because I don't deserve them."
"I only ask for one thing. Please, let me explain why I was acting as I did. I was thinking that I was doing the world a favour that I was killing a tyrant," the assembled guests gasped in surprise, "But in the past few days I came to discover that what I had been told, might not be true. That lies have kept me from knowing the truth," she threw Legolas a brief glance.
"I don't know you, King Elessar. I don't know what type of man you are, but I do know that your people love you. The people's favour cannot be won by treating them badly. That's why I cannot hate you any longer. I may not trust you and I may not be your friend either, but I don't wish that anything bad should come upon you and believe me the arrival of my mother would be something extremely bad."
"Let's assume I believed you, what would you suggest we should do?" Aragorn asked with raised eyebrows.
"Let me go," Arnaya answered. "This way she probably wouldn't come for you."