'Ah!' Krita gasped. 'Not too deep!'
'But it has to be this deep, I know it!' answered Baléd, grasping her left arm with his, and holding a knife in his right.
'Hold still!' he barked, as she tried to break her arm free of his strong grip.
She tried desperately to think of other things as her friend made the symbol in her arm. She sat as still as she could, but couldn't help but pull away when he traced the fresh cuts again and again with his knife, making them ever deeper. 'For Sauron, for Sauron,' she kept saying to herself, sometimes mumbling it out loud. 'For our Lord, our Great Lord, this is for you.' She saw her room again, her room in the Dark Tower, and remembered how hard she had worked to earn it, in a place of such greatness and might. She dreamed for a moment that she was head of the Army, leading thousands of the strongest Orcs out of Mordor, while sitting upon a great black horse in the finest armor. She dreamed of her Lords' delight when the heir of Gondor was brought to the dark city, bound in chains, never to become King in that dreaded White City. She saw his tattered garments and how fine they must have been before he was tortured and beaten. All of his people must have praised him for who he was to become, and he took advantage of the attention every time he was able to. Though Baléd still made the last brutal cuts in her arm, she almost smiled when she saw the half-dead man in her head, and she would laugh at his surety of becoming King as he was dragged into Mordor.
'Done!' he said, lifting his bloodied knife and releasing her arm quickly. She pulled it away and tucked it to her stomach. When she lifted it, she saw the Eye, and blood was still oozing from the cuts, and it looked as if it were crying. She stared at it for some time, then tore some cloth from Baléd's hands and wrapped it. She gave him a hateful look as she stood up and left to wash the blood from her.
She cried out as the cold water ran over her arm, and dabbed at the wound with her shirt. When most of the blood was off, she wrapped it again and solemnly walked back to camp.
Baléd was unsuccessfully cooking (or rather burning) a rabbit on a spit when she returned. She snatched his utensils from him and took his place. He stood up, and looked down at her pitifully, his arms hanging loose at his sides. She ignored his stare, and turned the rabbit slowly above the fire. 'So young; too young, at that. She shouldn't have had to endure that,' he said to himself. She relaxed when he finally walked away, not catching his words.
He walked over to where his pack lay and started to toss random items in it, including some of Krita's own possessions. She sat, staring at the fire, but not really seeing it. She stared deep into the hottest embers, glowing orange and then red again; it took her a few moments to comprehend him when he told her that they would leave again in the morning.