MASHÂM- Duties
In the cold morning Meisar lay her face against the pillow on the other side of the bed. It smelled of him, his hair, damp after an evening bath. She snuggled deep into the sheets that were warm with him also, his absence ever colder for it. Thorin had arisen before, early even for him, but there were duties a king was in no position to eschew. His absence made the broad, dark bed feel cold, too cold for her to relax another hour before dawn would break. And so she rose, feeling strangely compelled to go about the day with some energy, some sense of duty.
Rising out of the city and onto the terrace she heard the sound of hooves on the stone outside down below. Peering over she spied the gray figure on a brown destrier, the heavy hooves of the beast pattering impatiently on the stone while a dwarven smith checked the shoe of the right front foot.
"Wait!" she called down from the height. Gandalf whirled his head back about and pulled the reins of the horse tightly back when he saw her. Her skirts felt infinitely heavy, to lift over her feet so she could trot at a pace, down side-stair, cloak billowing in the wind behind her as she came across the bridge, now firmly rebuilt in stone.
"Did not my husband or his council come to bid you farewell?" Meisar laughed, secretly kindling a bemusement in her gut for his solitary presence here. The dwarven smith and the sentries drew back, but not before one of them brought a box for her stand on while they spoke.
"They did, my queen. Fear not for the lacking of hospitality I have known in the course of my visit. We broke our fast together whilst the stars were still in the sky."
"It is nearly noon," she said.
Gandalf lowered his hat slightly toward his eyes. "It is strange, my queen, to meet your eyes so closely without stooping," he remarked.
"We dwarves ill like being reminded of our height," she half-grinned. He had not answered the question; even without saying his suddenly withholding, if amiable, expression told her he knew it to be an inquiry. She did not press on.
"Where shall you go now, Gandalf?"
"To Rivendell by the next moon. And then perhaps I shall peruse for a long spell the great library at Isengard, and seek the council of those who would do all to stand against further evil in this world. And then I hope I shall make my way West, and find the green pastures of the Shire a welcoming respite."
"We welcome your help in doing so, if there comes a time we must," Meisar said.
"I may only impart my council upon such matters, my queen. We do not meddle, we wizards."
"Some might say otherwise, Gandalf. Depending on how one defines meddling, of course."
"Indeed," he sighed. "I have much enjoyed your company, Meisar, queen under the mountain, the most unexpected personage I have encountered in a long while." He peered down at the diminutive dwarrowdam, in her simple currant gown and leather belt studded in fire opal, heavy furs on her shoulders over a gray fine wool cloak, and her long braided hair otherwise unadorned completely. She looked to him to be of some gentle dwarven class, but hardly a queen.
He smiled down at her almost tenderly when he had his mount again. "Spread your cares wisely, my lady. It will do you all the good to vigilant for those about you. Your duty has not changed, even with your circumstances. You still have a flock to tend, my dear shepherdess, for the wolves will come again."
.
Thorin had kept to the council hall nearly all of the day, emerging only to break bread at midday with her. She was tempted to ask if she might take up some task for him to ease the burden but Dis desperately did not want to take a brisk walk with Aroin's company. Dis was waiting in her chamber in her cloak and gloves by the time Meisar had hurried her way across the city back to the royals' quarters. Dis was supposedly punctual with her daily walks but that might have been Aroin speaking through her. In the days that had passed her crying fit at supper, all, with the exception of Thorin it seemed, had made certain of a vigorous daily routine.
"I am sorry. I only stopped to bid Gandalf farewell," Meisar apologized quickly. The dwarrowdams in the chamber took note of her red nose and chapped, bare hands.
"Let us walk then, uzbadnatha," Meisar invited. Dis put her arm out so that the dwarrowdams might escort each other with mutual affection.
Aroin stood up quickly, chafed. Fred looked back at her and whined, scratching at the door with the other dogs. Aroin's hands came to rest on the shelves of her hips. "Exerting yourself so will do your majesty no good. It will only distract your attentions from your greater duty, and that is begetting an heir."
"I'm no use lying on my back now when Thorin is hours on end at the council chamber," Meisar retorted, slightly annoyed. It made Dis smile with a clandestine satisfaction.
Aroin parted the furiously wagging sea of the dogs dashing back and forth from the door. "My queen, your psychic energies must be directed the womanly parts. This business of the coronation is far enough to consume those forces and leave them in dereliction of their duties," Aroin lectured, self-effacing for a dwarrowdam who was unmarried and childless.
Meisar smiled, smoothing her wind-licked hair back in the mirror. "Aroin, you are most correct. That is why I have put Emli to the task. She will see that the details are well-managed."
Emli's eyes opened in surprise and then clouded greedily and jubilantly, subtle enough toward her sister-in-law that she would not have guessed the newness of the news to both of them; long ago had she learned to play such a game.
"Of course my queen. It shall be splendidly done, just as we discussed," trilled Emli, winking at Meisar victoriously.
Aroin crossed her arms in the corner, sullenly defeated. "This king was not brought back to being for any other purpose than that the Creator has determined his line is meant to continue. Or else why bother? So that louts from the Iron Hills might inherit? I shall not live to see this kingdom reek of boar dung. The dragon was bad enough a beast to inhabit it."
"Mistress Aroin, I beg you not worry. My king and I have made strenuous efforts toward such a duty, and if it is to be, I think it to be well-rewarded in due time." She wanted desperately for the bitterly cold day to be done, and she and Thorin warm in their bed again.
"But it is my job to worry," lamented Aroin. Dis rubbed the squared, rigid shoulders of her secretary serenely, Aroin's sour face unmoved, plunked back in her chair, at her table overflowing with attainders, bills, contracts, and her own stack of silver.
"Trust in the Creator to supply all things that must be," chastised Dis calmly. "An heir is not the only answer to this kingdom's lingering woes."
.
They took the long path of the terrace that spanned Erebor's façade, the sentries pulling back their long axes, standing at attention as they passed. Frost coated the stone. The snap of the winter air brought color to Dis's face.
Fred and Raincloud ran on ahead, a pair of well-bundled dwarflings giving gleeful pause, unused to seeing dogs under the mountain. Wet snouts met their own red noses, the mother trotting at a puffing pace behind them, a gray-bearded matron seemingly widened to twice her usual width in a fur extant robe and over-cloak with a fluffy pointed hood.
"Dogs? Where did such creatures come from?" the dwarrowdam pondered, watching carefully over the two equally-clothed dwarflings under her feet, chasing the dogs around the circumference of her.
"To me, Fred. Raincloud, Redcoat."
The gray dwarrowdam looked up and smiled broadly, curtsied toward Dis as best she could manage. "My lady princess! Uzbadnatha!"
"Lanz Galikh," Dis leaned forward, taking the woman's gloved hands in her own, kissing her cold-reddened cheeks. "Good lady, may I present the queen, yasathu Thorin."
"Meisar the shepherdess?" the dwarrowdam rocked on her feet too bemused for a moment to offer a similar curtsy.
"As my brother's wife, the queen," Dis reminded gently.
"A little of both, really," Meisar said, sheepishly, her face twitching in the cold wind. The two dwarflings clung at the older dwarrowdam's skirts, intently studying the hounds, who were doing the same about Meisar's. Dis stepped forward and took the woman's arm affectionately.
"Come now, my friend. Tell me some good news of this kingdom's goings on. I do not always hear much besides the drama of my household ladies."
The dwarrowdam grinned easily. "Two babes have been born under this mountain in only this week past. I can scarcely believe it. Two. Mine and Dagny's own niece is mother to one, a hardy well-formed boy. I've made for her a well-stocked basket with balms and blankets and rattles from the toy market, and plenty of good linens for swaddling his wee bottom," trilled the dwarrowdam proudly. "And soon, another shall be added to this proud brood."
"Goodness me, Meisar. This is Unn, sister of Dagny and of Nali, who is distant kin and close friend to Mister Balin," Dis explained.
"And my grandchildren!" she alluded lovingly to the wide-eyed little ones, their noses running. She put her cold hands to Meisar's face and rested the tip of her nose sand forehead to her own, affectionately. "I give Mahal my prayers that my queen may be so fortunate soon. An heir to the throne! What a delight to imagine!" Unn nearly chortled with delight, drawing back, still holding her hands.
When she had hastened to get the little ones back into the warmth of the inner city, Dis sighed contemplatively. "I should not be so unkind toward Aroin. I would be even more useless without her," Dis confided. "But she is absolutely intolerable company."
"She does enjoy giving orders. Even for me to have a child, to wish it into being at that moment with Thorin well on the other side of the kingdom."
"Thorin should have had heirs of his own long ago. But now is as good a time as any. With a woman he loves."
Dis took her arm again, went on walking. "The lord of Dale; tell me, what is he like, in true?"
"He is a man who has great pride in his children. He desires peace for their sake, if none other," Meisar expounded.
The answer seemed to please Dis in a serene way. "Then I cannot hold him in enmity. Nor should my brother, for what it's worth."
"He wishes that I am childless. He is afraid for what will happen if the line of Durin is carried on. But to wish barrenness on a woman is a cruel thing, even if I understand his mind," Meisar recounted, dismally.
"A crueler thing is to wish motherhood upon a woman who is doomed to lose her children, one way or another. I do not want you to have that experience, Meisar. I would not wish it upon my fiercest enemy."
"Do you fear the same?"
"I am always afraid," Dis said only above a whisper. "Come then, tell me more. Did Thorin behave himself? Or did he sulk and pout and growl under his breath with this dragon-slayer lord?"
"He surprised me with his civility," Meisar admitted, gladly enough.
"I have heard Bard called solemn in his countenance," Dis went on, holding Meisar's arm for support as they tottered over a sheet of slippery stone. "But a father's love softens even the sternest of men."
"I think him not to have a wife. Perhaps she is dead."
"Wife or no wife, the love of one's children surpasses all others," said Dis.
"Yes," Meisar agreed flatly, unsure of its possibility, even if she understood it to be the natural way of things. The love she carried for Thorin was barely enough to hold inside herself day to day. There was no love greater than that she could imagine bearing, though the thought of having her own child had warmed her heart for years, filled her with an unquenched longing that she could not have processed wholeheartedly until now. I will make room, she thought. I will spread my cares indefinitely.
Dis could read her thoughts though, that smile she gave, wisdom-misted in its subtly, a look Meisar had only recently begun to read since being around women so often, as if it were some secret unspoken language between the female kind.
"When you have a child, don't be surprised to see a whole separate being become in Thorin," she surmised. "Not for the worse of course. The only true joy I ever saw in him before you was in the presence of my sons. I had known the only true joy then..."
Dis turned her face away from the biting wind. "When Fili was born the dwarves of Ered Luin held a great feast. It lasted for days. Hundreds of dwarves came from far and wide to commend his birth. And I…" Dis's face wandered into a whimsical beam. "I sat at the head of a great table with Thorin on a seat lower even than my own. He and Eili my One were sore from laughing and drinking that day."
Her eyes were like Thorin's, the ruminating pull of them still somehow distant; like Thorin, she was always somewhere else, sometimes a better place it seemed.
"I was crowned in flowers and my son wrapped in an ermine my nursemaid saved from the fires of Erebor. A custom of exile, something Hobbits did they said, the flower-crowns. The Blue Mountains offered coal from their depths, hardly the sort of gold or jewels for a proper head-dressing when a new mother is feted. And yet I felt more a princess on that day, in my old dress and a fur cloak that had burs in the collar… than ever this mountain had offered me."
"Gandalf seems to think it may be more than that. But he will not say plainly. I think I should have asked more forcefully. Thorin wanted me to. I think I may have been lackluster in my duty there."
Dis was quiet awhile. Inside the mountain the sounds of the marketplaces being packed away for the evening rang quietly over the open terrace, the lanterns on the exterior starting to be lit.
"Wizards by their nature are forced to take into account the larger world. We dwarves take care of our own first, and protect our own, even if it means others may be ill served. It is a flaw of our nature? Perhaps. Alas, my father respected Gandalf, as do I. It is not in his nature to utter evil, even toward the most reluctant of allies, which I suppose we are. He did for my brother so to save his life, and spare him, of what I do not know. In Valinor many ages before this they say he was taught by one they called the patron of mercy. I will have to trust in that, that he was well-taught," Dis said. "But my father put Gandalf's advice before he put his own folk. And look what happened. A chain of monstrous events that left my sons dead in the end. All so we could have this mountain. Isn't any mountain as good as the next?"
"Is it?" Meisar ruminated. The wolves would come again, the wizard said. To Erebor or from within?
"Gandalf is wise and does only good in his intent, but he has sorely misunderstood or refused to understand one crucial thing, about me, anyhow," Dis continued. "I will not forget my father's fate, nor my sons', for doing as he bid. I will not make that same mistake, for our race would not survive if we all did as wizards bid us. These wars are not ours to fight."
"When it comes to our door, then whose is it to fight?"
"Ours and ours alone, if it comes to that."
"Are you sure about that, Dis?"
"No," she said, as tiredly and as flatly as if she had drawn the answer to that question long ago and many times before. The braziers were flaring up ahead of the dusk on the walls of Dale, small beacons of light against an oncoming darkness.
.
Uzbadnatha- Princess
Yasathu- Bride Of
Lanz Galikh- Good Evening