List of Characters:

Gondorian:

Farielle - Gondorian girl, kidnapped

Lominzil - her brother; a squire of Dol Amroth

Imrakhor - his knight

Caronnen - Farielle's father

Nelbrethil - her mother

Eruiglas - Farielle's oldest brother, killed in battle at Caldur

Gwaithmir - Farielle's second oldest brother, a bard, now her father's heir

Menelglir - a squire of Dol Amroth who tried to save Farielle

The Draugrim - a group of men who, in secret, fight against Harad

Haradrim:

Eruphel - Lady, Ruler of Seaward Tower

Eron - her husband

Khaan - her guard captain

Nisrin - Eron's younger sister; a friend of Farielle

Barzhaid - drunken & disgraced corsair

Mirdaneth - Captain

Azradi - Lady, Ruler of Farside Tower

Alphros - her brother, claimant to the throne of Gondor

Yildirim - a corsair in their service

Alkhaszor - a Gondorian man sworn to Alphros

Amestris - a young desert girl; a friend of Farielle

Tiribazus - Amestris' father; captain of Farside

Lojrul - Steward Regent of Desert Tower

Niakhti - in the service of Sauron; and Lojrul

S'aria - novice priestess of Sauron; an easterling

Vain - a brigand and a thug; kidnapped Farielle from Seaward

Massai - one of Vain's men

Fazjed - one of Vain's men

Jarad - a street boy

It wasn't dark. No one came; no one told her to eat, or woke her with harsh whispers and rough hands. And it wasn't dark. Farielle touched the bed - it was soft. But it might still change. She couldn't trust anything. She shut her eyes and tried again to find the isle of Valinor, but the terrible thirst that scorched her throat and burned her lips dragged her awake. She drank, and drank again. This too was new - as much water as she wanted. But there were still guards.

Farielle looked at them out of the corners of her eyes - studying them without seeming to. She didn't think they were the men she remembered - but there was so little she could remember with any surety. Her mind was a maelstorm of darkness and pain, with nightmares looming into focus and reforming and fading again.

At last, she gave up trying to remember, and curled up under the blanket and slept.

Night-time comes round once more within the halls of Desert Tower, and the bustle oontinues throughout its corridors despite the hour. But one room at least sees a measure of peace; the chambers of a former worthy by the name of Hakkad having been swiftly made available for the new guest of the Steward.

Lojrul has installed Farielle in this room, which contains a spacious bed of down, a desk and many an intricate piece of artwork upon the walls. A small table has been set beside the feather mattress bearing a plate of bread and a jug of water; otherwise the woman of Gondor has been left alone to rest as she will.

But, all the same, two guards keep watch over the chamber from the shadows of the doorway, and were the girl to know it, six more men maintain a vigil on the other side of the door in the corridor.

Farielle has lain on the bed for most of the day - sometimes asleep (or at least with her eyes shut, for she looks no more relaxed than she had earlier in the kitchen), sometimes staring at the ceiling. She hasn't eaten anything, though several times, she has drunk from the jug. Small muscles jerk and twitch, and sometimes, she seems to watch things that aren't there - though always, after a few minutes, she pulls her attention away, returning it to a single point on the ceiling. Always slender, she looks nearly skeletal now; her eyes huge and shadowed in her thin face.

There is a quiet exchange of voices in the hall - perhaps two or three - before the oaken door to the chamber protests meekly as another enters. Only once it is carefully closed in her wake does Niakhti turn an appraising eye to the restless Farielle. She crosses the room quietly, though without any apparent attempt to hide her presence, and lowers herself into the desk chair before speaking. "How are you feeling?" A simple question with an obvious answer, perhaps, but it is offered in a honeyed timbre.

And right behind her, slipping in with careful steps, Lojrul closes the door behind them, before likewise crossing the room. He says nothing, however, merely looking between the two women, before he moves to the wall and leans against it to watch.

There is a pause. To look or not to look, that is the question... At last Farielle turns her head - yes, a person belonged to that voice. And someone moves behind her; the girl's gaze shifts to Lojrul, before returning to Niakhti. Another long pause. Perhaps she doesn't know an answer to that question. Perhaps she isn't sure there is really a person there asking it. Finally, voice thread-thin, she says, "Thirsty."

Niakhti leans over at her waist to check the jug of water. When a hollow slosh reveals it to be emptier than expected, a wordless glance is given to one of the guards, who opens the door widely enough to relay a murmured message.

"Of course you are," Niakhti muses, watching even the littlest movements Farielle makes as if they had some meaning to them. The meaning behind the plate of untouched bread, however, is unmistakable. "Have you not yet been hungry, Farielle?" she presses gently, a careful emphasis on the girl's name.

Farielle glances at the bread and a look of revulsion crosses her face. She doesn't answer - not right away - but instead, pushes herself up so that she is seated and leaning against the wall behind. With a deep breath and a frightened glance at the guards, she says the fateful words, "I don't want more bread. I - " Her gaze flickers up to Lojrul, then back to Niakhti, and finally to a point somewhere near the other woman's left shoulder. " - don't want to keep seeing things. That aren't there."

The guards say nothing. Vain does not appear.

"Look at my face, then," the Desert woman asks quietly, seeking Farielle's eyes intently with her own. "And know that I am here before you. The effects of what you were given will fade in time." A smile curls Niakhti's lips, and without taking her focus off of the Gondorian girl, she reaches for a small piece of the bread for herself, taking a small bite with no apparent hesitation. "Surely you won't mind if I save it from waste, at least? I will have whatever else you wish sent up in its stead."

As if drawn by a magnet, Farielle's gaze swings up and over, her eyes meeting Niakhti's. Then they drop to the bread as the other woman eats it, before rising again. There is a long moment while the Gondorian girl wars with herself in silence. Then slowly - perhaps hunger has won for the moment - she says, "Cheese?" She does not ask for reassurance that it will not be drugged.

Niakhti smiles between bites of bread, her brow arching subtly at the small victory. "Cheese it is," she answers without hesitation, and another nod to the guards relays the message down the hall even as a elderly woman appears with a fresh jug of water.

Though her tone yet remains light, Niakhti still seeks Farielle's eyes with her own with a watchful intensity in their depths. "Are you comfortable, otherwise? It is our wish," she adds with a glance afforded to Lojrul, "For you to have all that you need... for as long as you are here."

"Indeed," affirms Lojrul to Niakhti's words. "You are our guest, pale lady, not our captive."

Beneath the hesitance, Farielle's eyes are wary. Watchful and reserved. She doesn't bother looking around at her surroundings, merely nods in answer to Niakhti's question. And when she glances back at the man, there is nothing in her face to say whether she believes his words or not, though she nods again in apparent compliance.

"Good," Niakhti answers quietly after another bite of bread, thoughtfully chewed with eyes yet rapt upon the girl. "I know your memory is clouded by things that do not seem real. So too do I know that it is a lot to ask for you to trust, in the wake of what has happened to you. But you will not be harmed again."

A smile then, and the woman reaches out to pour more water from the newly-refilled jug into a stout clay mug beside it. "Your eyes will steady themselves, and so too will your mind. And when that happens, you may walk more freely again. Do you trust in that?"

Words are no guarantee. And though Farielle nods again - she knows the effects of the drug will wear off eventually - there is not much in the way of trust in her face. More - a kind of acceptance: she has no way of knowing who is lying or when, and even words spoken now in good faith may be rescinded in the future. For now... she reaches for the water and drinks again, emptying the cup as though the liquid has no power to quench thirst. But a small acceptance is growing - this is somewhere else. She is no longer in Vain's power. "Where am I?"

There is a soft knock at the door, and the guards admit another serving woman, this one younger, and carrying a plate of varied sliced and curded cheeses to place before Farielle. In this moment's exchange, her eyes widen perceptibly upon the pale woman, and she seems to leave the room more slowly than she entered it to allow for a longer look.

Once the serving girl has left once more, Niakhti continues. "You are in Desert Tower. I am sorry that you have not been allowed out, but surely you must know that it is your safety we fear for. Once matters have calmed - and we are confident in your health - that will change. Would you like that?" Though her questions are simple, there is much behind Niakhti's features, the odd glimmer in her eye that sparks in every change in the girl's face.

Farielle stiffens slightly under the servant's gawking, but she refuses to look up. Until Niakhti speaks, and then her gaze lifts to the door and the guards there. Out... a smile of sorts twists her lips; it is too bitter to be called one in truth. Without replying, she looks down at the plate, taking a small piece of cheese and eating it slowly. Her hand trembles almost undetectably; she forces herself to wait a minute before taking another piece.

"Perhaps," interjects Lojrul quietly to Niakhti, "she would benefit from some of your... desert healing?"

Even if the subtle trembling of her hand is missed, the import behind the girl's smile is surely not. Nor are Lojrul's murmured words. "Tell me then, Farielle. Look at me, and tell me how you feel now? Truly, if you will. You needn't fear your own voice." Niakhti's own voice is honeyed and low, as if between the two women alone.

Terror flashes through Farielle's eyes at Lojrul's soft words, and though she veils it almost instantly, she can't keep from shrinking back a little. Her hand shakes a little more visibly as she takes another piece of cheese, concentrating on it, calming herself as best she can - save when something ghosts past and her eyes drift after it. Niakhti's prompting draws the girl's attention back to her.

"Dizzy," she says after some thought. "Thirsty." What a feeble word for the terrible thirst burning her throat! "I think - " She looks around uncertainly and finishes, " - someone is watching me. But I - I can't see them." Of the things that seem so real and then vanish when she tries to touch them, of the voices that come from nowhere until a person suddenly appears out of smoke with moving lips - she says nothing.

Niakhti's voice remains consistent, striving to ground Farielle with a timbre fluid like the drifting of sand in a desert breeze. "There are others here, yes, but they are your allies. Who has watched you before? Who have you seen?" A gentle, ever-present reminder follows with a bit more strength behind it. "Look at me. You needn't fear."

The woman's voice is soothing - though perhaps it isn't quite a match for the quivering drug-induced tension. Allies - a faint shake of Farielle's head rejects this. She has no allies in this place. But her eyes move back to Niakhti's and stay there a long moment before dropping once more. "Men," Farielle whispers, trying to sift through the chaos of her memories. "I - I don't know. I don't know what was really there and what wasn't. Someone with a mask. White and red. He - " She shivers and is silent. "Lord Alphros."

The Desert Steward stiffens at this, and he glances alertly to Niakhti, though he says naught as yet.

"Alphros was there?" Niakhti presses gently, slowly leaning closer to close a nonthreatening fraction of the distance between them. By the care in her words, she endeavors to keep any trace of disbelief from her voice, even as the Steward tenses behind her. Her sun-burnished face remains equally placid. "Did he speak to you, Farielle?"

The face so clear in Farielle's memory fades as she tries to catch it, like a rainbow that stays always just out of reach. "I - I don't know!" She starts to shake, blinking rapidly as thought and memory fragment. "No - no, I don't - I can't - " One hand comes up as if to ward something off, though her fist is clenched. Though she stares at Niakhti, it's obvious she isn't seeing the woman any longer.

As an apparent fog descends over Farielle, Niakhti steals a moment aside to whisper to Lojrul. "This will be difficult. Perhaps until tomorrow." This is all she dares as yet, lest the words influence the apparitions Farielle sees.

"Peace, Farielle," as Niakhti turns again upon the girl, her name echoed again. "You have comfort and food untainted by that which has poisoned your mind. There are none here who would strike you. None who would harm you." The words fall into the cadence of a chant of sorts, and though their speaker may not be seen for the moment, she seeks the young Gondorian woman's eyes with no less urgency.

His eyes narrowing, Lojrul nods all but impercetibly as Niakhti addresses him, ere he leans back against the wall once more.

It has been a few days since the last dose was sprinkled onto water or kneaded into bread, and most of the effects would likely have already worn off, if the girl hadn't been kept on it nearly constantly for most of a month. But still, this isn't a true delusion - only the memory of one - and Niakhti's voice penetrates into the dark maelstrom of Farielle's mind. She blinks, a face rises into focus. The shaking doesn't stop, but the girl lets her arm drop, looking bewildered and vulnerable. There is no one there. Is there? She looks around the room uncertainly.

Niakhti's eyes narrow somewhat as Farielle returns to the present, and a further aside to the guards is offered. "Send for incense. Kariyz will know the blend."

Upon returning the weight of her gaze to the girl. "If you will not look to me, Farielle, then focus on your own hands before you, for you know them to be yours. Trust in your memory, and that the illusions it has turned upon you are fading where your own recollections of truth shall remain."

Another moment between them, and Niakhti's voice renews, not upon Farielle's attacker, but upon another subject of interest. "Remember Alphros. Remember his voice. Did he speak to you?"

Focusing on Niakhti's face for a moment, Farielle nods a tiny bit. That was what she had tried to do, refusing to acknowledge the visions , but they had been too strong. Still, she drops her eyes to her own hands, clasped tightly together in her lap. The knuckles are white, the fingers bony though finely shaped. Obediently, she tries to remember once more, but in the end only shakes her head. "I can't remember," she says softly.

This sinks in for a moment, and muffled footsteps pass down the hall into silence once more. When Niakhti continues, it is with a dark intensity - the beginnings of impatience? - behind her eyes that is mercifully absent from the timbre of her voice. "Tell me what you do remember? Any words spoken to you, or in your company? Worry not for the speakers' faces, if they elude or frighten you."

Any impatience is lost on the girl; she hasn't looked up. "Eat. They said, eat. Or ... " She shudders, the hollows around her eyes looking more bruised than ever. "Stay silent... you can go home." Little by little, almost too fragmented for understanding, Farielle repeats bits of words that swirl into her mind. "He'll hurt you. Vain's coming... No more. Eat. Take her out. Wake up. Need to ... her see him. Sit up and eat. Massai, did you bring it?"

There is little, spoken in a flat monotone. The men spoke little around her, and the drugs erased most of what she might have heard.

"Massai," Niakhti echoes with interest the name and eyes that flash in an instant to Lojrul. "One of the men who watched you?" By the audible excitement that forces its way around the edge of her carefully-metered alto, there is much more to follow whatever thought has spurred the question.

"I - " A face swims into Farielle's memory. "Yes?" And again, the perpetual echo, "I don't know."

"Very well," Niakhti answers simply, her voice yet soft, though abruptly turned elsewhere as she rises from her chair at last. "There will be nothing further accomplished until she's eaten, and slept properly, I suspect," come a few quiet words aside for Lojrul. "Would you have me stay, or see to... other business in the meantime?"

"As you say," answers Lojrul to this, nodding with a sniff as he stirs form his place against the wall. "There is no use in trying further this night, and we have other business that requires our attention. But if her wits are yet addled from Vain's ministrations, then no other guest will find her of value either."

He looks to the guards. "See that she is not disturbed unless it be by myself or the Hand, and alert either of us should she wake from her stupour."

Farielle sits silently, staring at her hands, making no response to Niakhti's leaving, nor to the quiet conversation between the Haradrim woman and Lojrul. But eventually, she takes some more cheese and eats it. And as the light outside fails, she sleeps.

A night and a day have passed, during which Farielle has been left alone - for the most part. Two guards have remained at the inner door, and servants have come in and out, more often perhaps than strictly necessary to bring the food and water that is their excuse.

But the girl has slept for some part of this, eaten more, and lost a measure of the thirst that plagued her earlier. At some point in the night, she had paced restlessly back and forth, picking up things and setting them down again without ever really looking at them, though she never tried to go through the door.

Now though, she is standing at the wall looking at a map. The writing is strange to her, and she frowns as she puzzles at the coastline.

One of the guards steps aside long enough to let another pass into the room, as many have throughout the past day and night. This one, however, speaks but a word at first, in a tongue as strange in its flow as the writings the girl studies.

"It is the name my people have given the Bay of Belfalas, though many of them have never seen it," Niakhti continues, the Sindarin word coming as easily, albeit in a peculiarly accented fashion. "Have you an interest in geography?" Even as she asks, the Desert woman crosses the room to stand a few paces behind Farielle's right shoulder, arms crossed casually in front of her as she watches the back of the girl's head.

Muscles have lost their bowstring tension, no longer jerking randomly as over-wrought nerves fire without warning. And so Farielle's sudden stillness as someone not only comes in, but speaks, might be more easily noticed. After a moment, she places her finger on a blue-colored curve. "This?" She tries to repeat the word Niakhti has said, mangling it, though not too badly.

Niakhti smiles at nothing - or at least, without audience. "Yes," she answers, in which the smile can be heard, perhaps. "But if ever you are to come across a chieftain of the Haradwaith who asks from where you hail, I do not suggest that be the waypoint you give him. Not that I expect you shall find yourself in those surrounds."

Slow steps bring her around to Farielle's peripheral view. "You appear to be recovering. Eating. Sleeping." If these are questions, or she seeks confirmation, it is betrayed only by the curious way she watches... and waits.

"Where should I say I am from?" Farielle asks curiously, and repeats the first word under her breath. Her eyes slide sideways as Niakhti comes into view. A pause. "Yes."

She is still gaunt-thin - it will take more time to regain lost weight - but the hollows of her eyes are not so shadowed or so deep.

"Alas, my dear girl, I fear you have no answer to give that your pallor would not betray," Niakhti sighs, though amusement remains upon her face as she sets to pacing once more, seeming rather uninterested in the papers she mimes rearranging upon the desk, the rest of which has been well-cleared. "The Haradwaith is a different place. You might think its men crude, and I doubt you would find their interest in you to be the savory sort."

"Perhaps you should put it from your mind," she adds as an afterthought. "You are safe here, after all."

Farielle nods in seeming agreement and turns away from the map, standing now with her back to the wall and watching the woman fidget around the desk.

The papers now straightened, and perhaps Farielle's gaze felt upon her, Niakhti smiles at some thought unspoken, saying nothing for a long moment but for an aside to the guards. "Leave us."

Without even so much as a questioning glance, the two Desert-garbed men step into the hall, where their footsteps are heard to halt just beyond the door.

"Farielle," Niakhti murmurs, in a honeyed timbre not unlike that which reached out through the mental fog not long before. "I require your help."

The Gondorian girl watches the guards leave, her gaze returning to Niakhti's face as the woman speaks again. She waits, quietly.

"I know you probably think our ways of justice cruel," Niakhti begins, though allowing no time to agree or dissent. "But surely you know, as well as any now, how very desperately times call for it. Evil such as that which has been done to you breeds even now in dark places, hiding behind those who are not your enemy. If it is not flushed like venom from a wound, it shall remain. And the strife that brings war with your cities of stone will go unchecked."

This has of yet been spoken to a wall, and when Niakhti turns, it is with an urgency upon her fine bronzed features. "Those who now guide Desert Tower have long worked to unify the peoples of the Haradwaith, with which I doubt you and your House of Girithlin have concerned yourselves. It is rightfully so."

A hush falls over her. "We would see Umbar at the same peace. But as long as those who torment us wear masks, it cannot be so. Your masked man must be found."

Farielle is silent still, listening. Something flickers through her eyes at one point, but still she says nothing. Until Niakhti is finished, then she speaks a single word. "Vain."

"Vain is a phantom only. A masked fool," Niakhti hisses, the picture of kindness faltering ever so slightly like a still pool of water disturbed by an idly-cast pebble. It is regained in a moment, but a fire burns yet behind her eyes as she takes two steps to skirt the room toward Farielle, if not directly. "The words he spoke to you? An inflection upon his voice? If there is aught else you might recall, Farielle, I must press upon you how important it may come to be.

"But... " Farielle falters, sudden doubt springing to her eyes. She shuts her eyes, pressing her hands palm-flat against the wall. "No," she says after a moment. "He was real. I remember that. He came in the night, to the garden. He sounded..." A frown wrinkles between her eyes. "Not right," she decides at last. "Not like a man."

"Yes, he is as real as you or I," Niakhti returns quickly. "But he has a face beneath his mask, and a name besides. He must. And just as truly, he has a reason for taking you from beneath Seaward watch." Eager to seize upon whatever recollection furrows Farielle's brow now, she draws another step nearer, studying her pale, drawn face. "Not right?" she echoes hushedly. "Like an animal, perhaps, or a shade?"

"I don't know," Farielle answers, still frowning in perplexity. "Not like an animal, exactly... but not like the voice of a man."

"I do not know why he - he wanted me." Her voice falters then strengthens. "Only to give me back again. I - I think they said that?"

This freezes the Desert advisor's steps, and for a long moment, she simply watches Farielle to see if she will continue. "To give you back," Niakhti echoes once more, the conviction in her voice perhaps meant to lend Farielle confidence in the memory. "But not unchanged. To first be brought to question your reality, somehow. Perhaps, in the end to bear some kind of message?" Her thoughts stream forth quietly, each with a careful vigil upon Farielle's reaction.

But the girl shakes her head. "They gave me no message. None I can remember at any rate - and what good is a message you cannot remember?" She sighs. "I am sorry, Lady. All I remember is darkness. I think I sat a long time - days perhaps - tied. Then... someone came and took away the ropes. And all after that is broken. It swirls in my mind and things come and go, and I do not know what was real and what was not." She is still a long minute, something that she does remember turning her white face still paler. Her voice drops to a whisper and her hands press harder against the wall. "I tried not to eat and he came..." Her voice changes slightly when speaking of the person who untied her - she remembers this man with some warmth - then hardens again as she goes on.

Frustration wars with the thin veil of patience Niakhti wears; and yet as Farielle struggles with this last thread of recollection, an ember - perhaps of hope - struggles back to life in the depths her dark eyes. "You were untied, and... Vain came? The masked man? He frightened you?" She too speaks quietly, as if a breath even slightly too strong would sweep away the memory.

Farielle's voice goes on, barely audible. "I think they put something in my food. I said I wouldn't eat, and they laughed... It was dark. Yes. Vain. He said - he said he would ... If I did not. So I ate. And the - the visions came again, after that. I was so thirsty, always."

"You will not be made to feel that way again," Niakhti answers with a quiet fierceness. "And Alphros?" she presses next, her voice tensed upon the name, though quiet nonetheless. "You saw him, in truth or in trick?"

Farielle's eyes flick to Niakhti's, fixed there for a long minute. "I cannot say," she says finally, wearily. "I thought that I saw him. In the lamp-light. I see his veil getting larger and smaller and larger again. But I thought I saw ... " Her voice tightens with pain. "... so many things."

Niakhti sighs tensely, pacing to the thin shaft of dimming light from the room's lone sliver of a window. Whether in discouragement or resignation of some other sort, her slender shoulders lose something of their poise. "Forget them, if you can. I'll ask no more tonight, short of your wishes from the kitchen," she says flatly with eyes hardened upon the narrow span of desert in her view.

"I am hungry," Farielle admits, sounding almost surprised. Her thin figure loses some of its tension. And wistfully, "I suppose you don't have any ... " She cuts herself off, abruptly. "Anything is fine. Just - no bread, please."

"Do not be afraid to take the folk of Desert upon their offer. Anything you wish to eat," Niakhti echoes a promise given a few days before, a slender brow arched in apparent amusement at the girl's moderated answer as she waits for another.

But the girl still hesitates - not memories, but the feelings they left behind, warring in her mind. She shivers, warming her arms with her hands, then rubbing them together as if they are dirty. Almost at random, Niakhti insisting on an answer, she says, "That rice dish with beans? And some kind of squash in it?"

Niakhti smiles then, her manner different upon opening the oaken door to admit the two guards. "I shall have it sent along shortly. Rest well." A simple farewell before she exits, followed by footsteps more halting and harried than Niakhti's usual slow cadence down the hall.

Farielle watches her go, watches the two guards come back to stand inside the now-shut door. They glance at her, but then away. Slowly, the sick feeling leaves her, and she goes to sit on her bed, waiting for the food to be brought.