6
It had been easy, really. She'd simply changed into a low-cut dress, walked right into the Chief Archivist's chambers, said something sexy, and he was practically giving her a tour of the forbidden Royal Records. After that, it was as simple as planting the non-lethal venom-tipped needle Morgoth had left on her bed into the poor bastard's panting neck.
Dirty Whore, that same, cautioning side of her spat.
I didn't actually do anything, just coaxed him a little, she answered, rolling her eyes skyward.
Still. Almost as bad as you and that demon thing …
Shut up, she thought.
Then, both sides of the now-vehement disagreement seemed to turn to each other across the metaphorical table, simultaneously saying, If I have some sort of duel-personality disorder, just kill me now.
She gritted her teeth as she threaded her way through the gloomy heaps of weathered scrolls, shelves reaching up towards the 150 foot tall cavern ceiling. This already had a filthy reek about it. Sure, she'd thought it was so simple, who really cared about a couple of misplaced claims to a now-deserted patch of dirt in Northern Mordor? But something still bothered her. Why, for instance, did she neglect to ask questions? Was it some sort of fear? Probably, but why then didn't she simply say no?
Because of Daven, she thought, all because of him.
She paused upon glimpsing the carved reminder of which section she was in. Just as Morgoth had said, there was a loose tile underfoot, and a barely-visible switch protruding from the inside of the shelf… halfway up the looming stacks.
"You have got to be joking," she muttered, setting herself to the task of clambering over the dust-infested scrollwork. An unwelcome bit of exercise, a quick start as the row of shelving rolled sideways, and a satisfying pop of a trapdoor coming loose later and she was home free. Free of the monster that had formerly ruled her life.
She stood, panting, a triumphant smile plastered across her dust-smeared features, her eyes twinkling with the greedy delight of freedom. All she had to do was find her mysterious employer.
"Easy as that, wasn't it?" a voice rumbled. While the Elvish Harpsicord remained silent, she still felt as if her ears were on the way to implosion, the nearly-whispered rasp somehow magnified to be louder than a drunken beggar's cheer on Founder's Day.
Eofeld dutifully held out the sealed roll of parchment, her quarry instantly snatched by a hand appearing from the depths of roiling shadows.
"Expecting a little… more, weren't we? Hoping to dig a little deeper?" the voice resounded, the slim figure of her demonic savior emerging with a faint puff of coiled-up blackness, almost like a cough. It then parted sideways, visible strands of light-repelling gas floating away towards less-resistant parts of the chamber, the invisible cocoon releasing its denizen.
"Truth be told… I didn't think it would be this…"
"Simple?" Morgoth said, the golden glow of his single eye providing the only light within the echoing depths of the deserted archive.
"Well…" Eofeld said, glancing about, "there's just… no one here…"
"Well however little actual effort you've had to put in, you've done me a great service, and I thank you for it," Morgoth the dazzlingly-white smile forming out of the mist surrounding his face. Eofeld took a step back. So it was… outside the mask?
"Um…" she said, "you're welcome, I guess…"
"Payment will be delivered whenever you're ready," another grin flashed faster this time, not so much a visible expression of a mouth spreading wide, but rather an image forcing itself into place, something that, if she were to touch it, Eofeld's hand would probably pass right through.
"Thank you," she replied, her head held high.
With that, Morgoth spun on his heels, the long tail of his oddly-styled trench coat whipping behind him, his step the very expression of a clipped march.
"On second thought," he said, turning once more, "how would you like to work for me?"
Eofeld frowned, not sure what to say, "What do you mean?"
"I mean, taking more jobs. This one was easy enough, practically a stroll for you. What do you say?" Morgoth advanced a pace, his companion retreating equally.
Her mind raced. He was drawing her in, that was it. Daven was just the beginning. Soon, she'd be his full-time operative. For what, she couldn't be sure, but if she went any farther, she'd be hooked. All he'd have to do to remove or reward her was jiggle the line.
Then suddenly, another thought sprung into existence, Daven was only the beginning. If he could get rid of the bane of her existence for a simply checking out a book at the local library, what would he do for a more… intricate operation? The thought almost made her drool. Freedom, she thought, absolute freedom from Gondor and Rohan and her brother and Daven, Nefeila returned and set to the wild, somewhere out there in the hills near Edoras. A life of breeding horses, the life she'd yearned for since the day she came of age and left that existence behind. A Princess was a pawn to be traded in the incessant political games of Kings, and pawns never, ever, were allowed their owndestiny.
"What'll you give me?" she asked, the cautious, protesting side of her cringing at every word. But by now, she'd learned to ignore the annoying voice that held her back, the voice that so many of her unfortunate predecessors had listened to, and had suffered a life of quiet abuse for it.
"Always practical, aren't we?" Morgoth said, shaking his head, "you'll do nicely…"
"You still haven't answered my question," she repeated, the sound of her voice somehow breaking through her inherent fear of an apparent demon, rather addressing a man who could give her what she wanted, and was holding out. She sighed, opting to give it to him again, "what are you offering?"
Her companion shrugged, raising a single inquisitive eyebrow, "This." With a flick of the wrist, he launched a small, golden object gently spinning into the thickly-stuffed air. It seemed to draw light to it, the feint ripple of eye-catching reflection expanding to a searing radiance that filled the void about them, bathing the two in a sea of molten gold. Eofeld cried out softly, her eyes burning, but yet unable to shut them, for she was in rapture. Her pupils widened, locked on to the slowly rotating ball of luminescence.
Then, the ring dropped fatefully into the palm of Morgoth's outstretched hand, the surrounding light yanked once more into the barely-visible sheen that sparkled along the outer edge. A red flash was visible, circumnavigating the object before disappearing entirely, leaving in its place the etched markings of unrecognizable runes.
"M-mine?" Eofeld whispered; her voice somehow alien to her. But she didn't even register that as all thoughts were shoved out of her head by the all-consuming lust for the Ring.
"Well," Morgoth said, "it's not the real thing of course," the palmed jewel melted into that selfsame obsidian dust, swirling up into oblivion above his head, "but, thanks to you, I now know where the big prize is."
Something seemed to snap, the chamber growing instantly dimmer in an instant, the fixated pupils of Eofeld's eyes suddenly falling out of their reverie. She stumbled backwards, as if she'd just been head-butted by an invisible shockwave, "Is that… it?" she whispered, her confused eyes dilating.
"Yes,"Morgoth answered, "the one and only," he grinned, tossing an imaginary version of the Ring up into the air.
"I thought it was destroyed," Eofeld said. There was a feint buzzing towards the back of her mind, though she couldn't quite finger it.
Her companion cocked his head sideways, a thoughtful expression, or a look that she thought could have been contemplative, spreading across his face, "Do you know who I am?" He said, the sound emerging as a hushed whisper, almost as if the thought that had been imprisoned.
Eofeld shrugged.
"I am a man of great importance. Well, not a man, so to speak, but that's beside the point," Morgoth sighed, the eye rolling about within its socket, seemingly searching for the right words, "The point is," he finally said, "that I could've simply walked in here rather easily. This was a test, Eofeld, and you passed with flying colors. It's because I've got something to offer you, far more than the simple matter of jockeying the law around to get a divorce. I was worshipped as a god for a reason… because I stuck to the shadows."
Eofeld blinked, not entirely certain what to say to that.
Morgoth sighed, the dagger appearing from his pocket once more, "You just dug up old Frodo Baggins's will, something you're buddies in the Fellowship didn't exactly take a liking too. I'm sure you've heard the official story: went Ringmad after being stabbed by one of the Dark Lord's wraiths, got himself a free passage with the Elvish splinter group that thought they could leave reality for some sort of heaven. Truth is, he never went anywhere near that boat."
"He disappeared?" Eofeld said.
Morgoth grimaced, threading the weapon through his fingers as if he was caressing a baby, or maybe his wife, if he had one, "More like: he was disappeared."
"You mean…"
"Precisely. After the war, the Fellowship decided that they needed to tie up loose ends. And they couldn't exactly arrest Frodo Baggins, the sole destroyer of the Greatest Evil on Middle Earth, now could they?" Another harsh sigh, the eye rotating slightly, "'course not. At least not until someone comes up with the bright idea of quietly handing him over to the High Elves, who were apparently making his travel arrangements. Fun fact: he must've slipped on a banana peel or something because he never made it out of Rivendell."
Eofeld gasped despite herself. Frodo wasn't just any old hero, the type the bards sang about where half the details of their mighty quests came out of the bottle they were drinking from. No, the Slayer of the Great Eye was a legend in truth, an unassuming little hobbit with a titanic will, who had unfortunately gone mad towards the end of his life, all because he'd made contact with the Darkness long enough to save the world. And he'd been murdered? By the Fellowship?
"Is this… is this true?" She said, staggering nearly into one of the shelves. She'd grown up with tales of Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, who'd fought valiantly to save Middle Earth alongside Gandalf the White, Aragorn Ellesar, Perigrin Took and Meriadoc Brandeybuck… how was this even possible?
"Every word of it," Morgoth said, "the One Ring wasn't destroyed in the Fires of Mount Doom, it was simply split up, scourged so to say. People like myself have been trying to unearth the truth from the very moment Frodo died," he paused, the silent twirling of the ever-present dagger coming to an abrupt halt, "we're not looking for the Ring, rather preventing that from happening. The Hobbits made a crucial mistake at the Heights of Gorgorath. They dropped the Ring into the great fire, causing the Mountain to blow it's top one last time, and while the magma split that accursed object into a thousand individual particles, fragments remained, fragments that the Fellowship immediately had a hundred Special Peacekeepers pouncing on. I'm sure of it."
Eofeld blinked, her mind quite literally blown. If this was true then the entire fabric of her existence had just be turned on its head. No, more than that. Flipped upside-down, shoved into a hole and buried alive.
"What was the point, then?" she asked, skeptical, "why'd they even bother to destroy it?"
Morgoth snorted, leaning back against the tottering array of bookshelves, "mainly so the Enemy couldn't get at it, though I suppose it was certainly a boost for recruitment. Truth was, Sauron was the only one who could use it. It was his soul, after all, even though it drew others in like flies to a candle. The Big Bastard himself committed suicide after it was cast aflame, and things only got better for the Free Peoples from there, though the war wasn't over until they took Baradur. So the question is, of course… why not?" He shrugged, frowning at the seemingly independent motion of the twirling knife blade, "By all intents and purposes, it should've worked. Sure, he'd still have his heir, but he and anyone unfortunate enough to be within a hundred miles of him should have simply ceased to exist. You've got to remember, when dealing with the Dark Lords; they don't let things like that happen. There's always auxiliary spells. Always."
Eofeld's mouth hung open, her shock etched into her features for all to see, "and where the ring goes…"
"So goes the spirit of Sauron," Morgoth said.
Still, the rearward ranting's of her cautious mind grew stronger. She'd heard the name Morgoth before. It was supposed to signify hatred, evil, the most evil, in fact, of all things. Morgoth was the heretical deity the Dark Lords had worshipped, for the Valar's sake, Sauron had worshipped him. Wherever there was a temple in his name, thousands of innocent children were said to have been sacrificed to quench his bloodlust.
"Ah," the once-again shadowed man opposite her said, her mind somehow skipping the fact that he'd picked up her train of thought as easily as a long-wed couple finish each other's sentences, "the name. Bit of an awkward point, isn't it? Funny that you've never hear of me. Yes, if you must ask, I am him, the genocidal bastard's old tutor. But it's hard to stay loyal when you've been murdered by both sides, isn't it? Now are you with me, or are you without me?"
Eofeld sighed, the iron solidity of the term without crashing through the slim barriers of her mental resistance. She couldn't live without this job. She couldn't live without… that. The mere thought of the addictive beauty of the Ring, the truth that it held, threatened to tear her apart.
Her companion let a sly smirk pass through his detached lips, "Knowledge is power," he said, tossing the gyrating stiletto above his head and snatching it from the air with incredible dexterity.
Knowledge is power, she thought, and power is freedom, her mind once more turning to the dreams of an unbridled existence, riding bareback through the vast plains of her homeland, a thought even more compelling than that of the treasured Jewel.
"I'm in," she finally said, the last few dissenting cells holding out in the farthest reaches of her brain uttering a final death cry that rang audibly throughout her skull. She cringed for a moment, recovering with a flawlessly jaunty smile.
"Alright then," Morgoth grinned in return, "I hope you don't get seasick."
The guard shuddered, his eyes wide, the memory still etched into his very core. He'd never seen anything like it; the gaping maw of the mouth open wide in shock, the wide-eyed stare that could only belong to a soulless wanderer of the night… it brought the stench of evil at the mere thought of such a thing.
He'd first been summoned at the high-pitched wail of a distraught Royal Chamberlain, who could but usher him in to the room where his King lay dying. He still remembered the look of horror on Imrahil of Dol Amroth's face as he lay sprawled upon the heaped-up pillows, physicians and stern-faced conjurers crowding around him, his Royal blood spewing from his mouth in great, choking gasps. There hadn't been a visible wound on him when the crowd of hastily-summoned servants had rushed in to see their Liege spasming on the floor, his ringed hands clasping his throat, his chest gasping for air. They'd immediately heaved him on to the bed, the blood now flying about the room in great globs, the physicians looking to each other with mixed expressions of hopelessness and almighty fear.
And just one and a half fateful minutes after the emergency bells had first been wrung, Imrahil, the Slayer of Many Evils lay dead. They had all wept then, for he had been a great Majesty who had ruled fairly over the city's inhabitants and kept Gondor's taxes low. Tears had welled in the Guard's eyes as the doctors had emerged from the chamber, their heads bowed, their whispered voices uttering the dreaded call for the embalmers, and the order for the Herald's to summon the Alting to elect the new Sovereign.
The guard stared blankly out at the unwitting city that hung in a state of eerie silence only achieved at the first whisperings of dawn. His Majesty had been in the best of health only the day before. Everyone, even the gloomiest of souls had shouted the prediction of his long reign from the rafters.
He shook his head, not even noticing the faint reflection of sunlight off of the malicious sheen of a shrouded golden eye.
Author's Note: (CAUTION: Intended for die-hard Tolkein fans who are looking for an explanation, may contain spoilers depending on how well I can word it)
Alright, so you obviously want the question answered: why the hell isn't she running away right now? Well the truth is, the Dark Lords have a habit of corrupting people in Middle Earth, and she has heard of him, so it's kind of a mental choice thing. Also, this may not be clear, but the Old Legends are kind of vague. The Silmarillion doesn't exist in Middle Earth: there is no real definitive account of the olden days. People know what they know about Morgoth from Fellowship Propaganda detailing him as Sauron's Evil tutor (more on him in the next chapter).
Hope this calmed thine righteous fury.
Happy Reading!
-Neohtan the Wise