Middle-Earth, Dwimoberg Mountain, Paths of the Dead

Around his ankles the wisps of steam circled like slowly creeping spirits, or so he guessed for Námo refused to look down. He knew what he'd see there, he saw it every time he closed his eyes, every time he breathed too deeply, every time he took a step forward. They had been men, these bones that cracked underneath his boot, maybe good men, maybe bad, but it hardly made a difference any more. Either way they were bones now, forever silent, their stories never to be told even to the ears of the great and mighty. He'd never known them in life, so why should they mean anything to him in death?

They shouldn't, that was the truth of it. Yet with every skull that cracked beneath his heel, he couldn't help but feel like something had been lost, something precious, something that had meant a lot to him back…back before his memory faded…before everything faded.

Suddenly he stopped and turned his pale eyes down to look at the scattered remains of men at his feet…but they weren't there anymore, nothing was there anymore. Before him was nothing but a deep empty chasm, that went down and down and down, till not even Eru himself could find where it stopped.

He should go back, and yet where else was there to go? No where would have him. And with that depressing thought the Lord of the Dead stepped forward, and let himself fall.

There was no sound as Námo fell, no sight, or smell, or any of the other thousands of senses mortals could not even name. No as Námo fell there was nothing around him, not even the rush of wind smacking against his face, or the stank smell of the dead that had followed him before. As he fell, all he could feel was the deep, crushing sense of loneliness that crept into every avenue of this wretched place. It was worse than his own realm, even as hollowed out and depleted as it had become.

He fell.

And fell.

And fell.

Till he had almost forgotten that there had been a time before he fell.

And then suddenly he no longer was.

He hadn't landed, he'd simply ceased falling, hung like a fish out in market – frozen mid fall. No not frozen, hanging, something had caught his ankle and was holding him up, stopping his fall like he actually mattered to them. Or perhaps it was simply the notion that anyone could fall like this that disturbed the creature so.

Whatever the case the thing had caught him, was holding him in place by his weak ankle, was dragging him upwards trailing his back against the hard edges of the rock face. He was no longer falling, but that did not mean that his torment would end anytime soon.

Landing like a freshly caught trout on his back, Námo couldn't help but gasp from the pain, and the shock of it. The thing that had caught him, whatever it was, was leaning over him. Staring at him with its two pale gold eyes, like he was a particularly shiny coin in the treasure trove.

'What…what are you…where am I?'

The creature laughed at that, a strange rattling sound that left shivers of horror down Námo's spine. The thing continued to laugh and Námo tried to scramble away, but his body was too exhausted.

'Where are you?'

Croaked the creature.

'Where are you?'

'Here,' said the lord of the dead, thinking it unwise to leave any question asked by this…being, unanswered.

'Long have I asked that question, fit where did ye go? They never answered me ye ken? They always said ye were buried, ye were dead, but they're dead…and I'm dead, so how can someone that's dead not be here any longer. De ye ken fit I'm saying?'

The truthful answer would be no, not in the least, but the truth was not needed here…not in this instance.

''I am Námo, I came here to seek out the dead and bring them home.'

'De ye? Fit kind of dead, for there are many in this mountain and not all the same. Men, woman and children, the gone kind like ye, and then…there's me. Ye always said I was singular.'

'Who are you and who do you believe that I am?'

'Fit's a de with ye Da, ye know who I am!'

The creature sounded angry, close to tears in its frustration but Námo would not be swayed, he had to know who this was, and he had to know now.

'What is my name?'

'Aye, ye hit yer head hard when ye fell under those rocks, if ye can't even remember yer own name.'

He would have called it madness in another life, for madness it was no doubt, but over his many years of life among the dead Námo had learned to choose his words carefully. So, he did not laugh at the creature, revealed now by the faint light of the cave they sat in to be a ragged, filthy girl.

Her thin form was barely covered by the thin, ragged cloth that she wrapped around herself. Her hair was a tangled, matted nest of curls and as he stood there, staring down at the child, he realised that something about her felt familiar. But there was no time to analyse this strange feeling of familiarity between them, for there were voices coming from the cave entrances; voices that would quickly pass them by if he didn't do something.

'Help,' cried the Keeper of the dead, and suddenly the voices stopped, as if pausing to listen to something…to him. This was his chance.

'Help! Help, please I'm lost and I'm far from where I should be. Please somebody help me.'

There were no sounds of footsteps, for as Námo would see there was no need for feet. These creatures that stood in front of him now were not men, not living men anyway, they were dead…spirits of the long-forgotten dead. Not Elven dead at least, there were small mercies in this world, but their sickly green glow and the sharp jagged way their bones hung from their skulls did not sooth his already fractured nerves.

'Girl,' said the ghost with the broken crown perched upon his brow. 'Come away from him.'

'Naw Majesty,' said the wild girl. 'It's Da, it's da, he's come back, he's come back to me.'

'NOW!' The walls shook from the strength of the ghost's bellow.

The girl squeaked and scrambled up from the floor, stumbling over her own bare feet to reach the ghosts at the entrance. Then she fell to her knees and grabbed for the dead king's robes, sobbing into them as if she were still a much younger child.

'Please, please I don't wanna be alone no more, sir. Dinna ye let me be alone again…canna I just have this one thing…please I'll never ask for anything else, I just…I just want him back.'

Her sobs were truly pitiful, but the king seemed unmoved by them. Instead, he looked over her and up at the still standing Valar, and his skull made a strange grinning shape with his broken teeth.

'Come with us,' said the dead king. 'And we shall explain whose keep you are lost in, stranger.'

This is how the story starts:

Once upon a time, in a kingdom long forgotten by those that had cursed them, there lived a king. He was not a great king of men, his bloodline stretched not to those strange islands in the sea – but he was a king none the less, and one that valued his people. Some would say a little too much, for he saw his people's safety as far more important than the good of all.

In another tale, told by another teller, he would have been called a coward, and perhaps that is truth, for this king was afraid. Very much afraid of what would come should he choose the wrong path, the wrong side in the conflict. For you see there was a great war, such as had never been seen before between the two great evils of the world – the dark lord, he who called himself Sauron, and the men from the sea, those of the Numenorean blood.

The story changes with each telling, yet this truth remains in all: the Numenor descendants and Sauron did battle. The evil of Sauron was great indeed, such an evil that would coat all the lands in darkness – yet those from Numenor had already done great evil in this land themselves. They had raped, pillaged and sacked the natural born mortal people of middle earth and they had taken the land for their own. The only reason the king was still a king at all, was that lonely mountains held no appeal for those people of the red sea.

Yet the time when all men must choose their loyalties had come, and between the two outcomes of this fight – a life spent in servitude to the savages of the sea, was better than no life at all. So, the king had chosen, he had pledged himself and his people, and his armies to the service of the Numenor king Isildur.

The problem?

The King changed his mind.

The story teller falters at this, falters in his telling of how the king turned his back on his promise, turned his back on his vow to fight for Isildur. Sauron had sent people to bargain with the king, to sweet talk him, to embitter him against these men of the sea who had raped his homeland. This was not a great task, for too long had these words been in the king's mind, and soon he did hate openly the king of Arnor. But still, he would not fight for the dark lord. And so, the dark lord's servants came up with a compromise: you do not have to fight for us, they said, simply do not fight for Numenor.

And that is exactly what the king did.

He did not fight.

No, instead he took his wife, and his people and he barricaded them up in the mountain and he waited for the fight to be over. Soon it was and Isildur was victorious…and in that victory came his anger.

'You have betrayed me,' screamed this mighty King of men. 'You swore an oath to fight at my side and now you have broken it – you, who dwelled safely inside your mountain while better men gave their lives on the field of battle. Well fine, a fair king is Isildur, so I will let you stay inside your mountain – thou shalt dwell there to the end of days. Thou shall dwell there when your bodies have rotten and blown away into dust. You shall stay forever in your mountain until my blood releases you. Until my heir comes to this mountain you shall forever remain trapped within the walls that once housed your cowardice.'

'But no heir ever came,' finished the narrator.

'He actually referred to himself in the third person,' it seemed an odd thing to focus on even to Námo's wandering mind, but then again it was an odd fact to include in any retelling of such a tale.

'Yes, indeed he did – Isildur did that quite often, it was one of the many reasons it was so easy to hate him.'

Námo closed his eyes and tried not to sigh, all this he had needed to know– but none of it helped his situation now.

'Well, that was quite a tale, great king of the Mountain, truly your pain is great and not at all self-inflicted.'

The skull's lipless smile twitched slightly, and Námo was sure that if he could the king would have scowled.

'Your tale tells me why you are here, but not who that wild creature is, and certainly not why I am here.'

'Well,' said the king rather tartly. 'I know not why you're here, so my story could no more tell you that than a dog could speak and walk on its hind legs. You must have had some original purpose for venturing into this land?'

'Middle-Earth perhaps, but not this land Oh king, not a land of the deservedly forgotten dead.'

'What do you expect me to answer, oh great lord from beyond the lands of mortals? I have already told you how I and my people came to be here, as for the girl her father brought her here when she was nought but a babe, and she has dwelled in these caves with us ever since.'

That would explain the madness in her perhaps, thought Námo sourly. He did not know why the story had embittered him towards his dead hosts, but the fact remained that it had, and he would have to watch himself lest his tongue become spiteful.

'What kind of father would curse his daughter to a life like this?'

Oh well, never mind.

'I do not know, Calgacus was a silent companion in our solitude, he spoke not a word to me and mine and barely anything at all to the girl. But I know this, he was a creature of the dark…shirking the light. From the day he set foot in this mountain, to the day we found him crumbled and lifeless under a cascade of our falling architecture he was a mystery sir, much like yourself.'

'I am no Mystery, King. I am what I say I am.'

'Indeed, but then a man can be more than simply what he says he is in a land like this.'

'This is your mountain, King, so I'll take thee at thy word. If you could just tell me the way out or offer somewhere to rest for the night for I am very tired.'

'Indeed, indeed…but first you can answer me this question, how did you get into my mountain?'

'I was dropped here by…by…'

By what exactly, how could he begin to explain the creature they had seen in the Goblin caves to one who had clearly never beheld it before.

'A hobbit?' Said the king.

The Valar of death gaped and the King laughed.

'Sometimes,' he said through bursts of mirth. 'When we are lost and in trouble, we may find help from the most unlikely people imaginable.'

They'd let him be for now, those strange spirits of men fallen long ago; the girl stayed of course, he had a feeling that not even wild dogs could have dragged her from his side now. But that was…fine…it was manageable at least, she sat, crouched over in one of their cave's dark corners and watched him. She wasn't making any noise. Námo could ignore her like this, and focus instead on his own rushing thoughts.

This entire place felt familiar, as if he had been here many times before…and perhaps he had. The others had told him he had been in Middle-Earth and some of the terrible things he had done there, perhaps this had been the place he had done it. But no surely if that were true the ghosts would have told him so, for what reason would they have to lie to him? Unless…unless this was a ruse, unless they were keeping him here under the guise of hospitality while they conceived his punishment. And they were the dead, and no one knew better than Námo the strength of the Dead's revenge for they had nothing else to consume their time with. They did not need to sleep, or eat, they did not even need to slow down to speak with each other. They were dead, and the limits of the physical world was something they had simply outgrown.

He needed to leave this place, he needed to leave right now. He stood up with a jerk of his aching knees, and strode across the cave floor, the weight of his familiarity with it, still hung like an axe over his head. But he was so close to the door now, so close, if he could only make it out and be free of this terribly small place. He could find Vairë, they could run away not just from this terrible land but from their own as well. He saw it all now so clearly, it was his duty's fault that he had failed her, the duty the other Valar and Eru himself had tricked him into.

But he should have known by now that hope is never long for this world in places like this.

'Da? Da? Where are you going?'

The thin, skeletal fingers of the girl latched onto him, onto his sleeves and it's too late, his revulsion at this place, his hosts and the creature that now hangs on him like a dead limpet is already too strong. His hand shoots out, and strikes the stupid girl across the face, she lets go of him at last, falling away like a bag of bones on the floor. Her tears were loud and pathetic, which is what Namo shall tell himself when his hand still stings in the night from the impact of that blow.

The girl snivels and something cruel sparks within the Lord of Death's chest then, as he looked down upon her.

'I am not your father, wretch. I am no one's father.'

It feels like a lie to say it, a sin to even think it but surely it must be truth. He is the lord of death, and death cannot produce life.

The girl screams again, her voice high and pitched like a feral beast. She launches herself at him, scratches his face with her jagged nails and knocking him back until he himself falls. Falls back, until his head smacks against the hard brick of the wall.

The lord of the dead is out cold, as dead to the world as it has become to him.

Do not blink.

That is the first thing the Lord hears when at last he opens his eyes again…or for the first time…he can no longer tell anymore.

Don't Blink.

The world is grey and full of storms, the mist that once coated the ground now surrounds him, blinding him. Perhaps it has always been so and only now does he perceive it. He is alone in this mist, forever alone, where not even his bride will come to find him now. Perhaps that is a mercy, for he does not deserve her aid, he has never deserved her aid. Always has he been an unworthy recipient of her love, of her devotion, of her faith…but it doesn't matter now for surely that faith has died on his battlefield. Just as surely as any of his soldiers had.

Soldiers…he can see them now…hear their cries as he leads them out beyond the Passage of the Dead, to where not even the greatest of his wraiths could stand without a body to possess. He could hear them now, those men, women and children that he had attacked, that he had scourge in his pursuit of what? Freedom? From his duty, the entire purpose of his existence? Nay, that choice was for the likes of men and the other mortal races; he was a Valar and his choice had been made for him before he was even a glimmer of inspiration inside his maker's skull, and it was a fool who would try to claim anything else.

Not a king, or a lord, just a fool and nothing more.

There had been a great battle he could see it now in his mind's eyes, just him and the men of the Dunland. No…Gondor had been there as well, boys of Gondor, Men of Dunland and his people…the dead that should have remained forgotten. Oh, how he had judged that king with the broken crown, but how could he say he was better. Aye, he had not stayed home and hid from the battle in his cowardice, but the fact that he was even on that battlefield at all was the coward's path he strode.

He knows this as he stands in the mist, in the fog of his own unconsciousness. He knows this as he squints into the darkness, as the figure, the boy that has hunted his steps all across this strange shore of theirs, steps forward.

He knows the name before he sees the blue face.

Dunlander.

Savage.

Da.

Calgacus.

The Man of Dunland smiled at the Lord of the Dead – smiled at him wide, and said in a calm and controlled voice.

'Aye-aye Brother, nice tae see ye join us in the land o the living again.'

It was a boy that stood in front of the Valar of the Dead now. A boy with a round blue face, and sharp grey eyes. No, it was a man, thinner and older, a long beard and shadowed distrusting eyes. No, it was both of them.

It was everything that Calgacus had ever been.

Everything that Mandos had ever been.

For this was the truth – the warrior, the Dunlander had been Mandos' cage after his army failed to take Dunland. The witch, Mab, had trapped him in the creature in her womb – where he had promptly fallen asleep.

Where he had stayed, trapped and hidden deep within the boy's chest – until his death. And then Mandos had been able to go back home again, but the boy, the Dunlander would forever remain apart of him.

A memory of what he had done.

What he had been.

And now that memory took form before him, and smiled as if the Lord of the Dead was just a stupid boy himself. Ignorant and dumb.

'Well noo (1),' said the memory. 'Fa would ever be dumb enough tae call ye aat? (2)'

The Lord of the Dead nodded in cautious agreement with his unconscious.

'Ah mean ye're hardly a Lord o onything, let alone the dead, fit wi aat Fëanor running aroon.'(3)

'You know of Fëanor?' Said the Lord.

'Fa doesn't ken the King o the Dead?' (4)

Mandos snorted in derision.

'He is no king, such creatures can have no king.'

'Ye may wint tae ging an tell him aat, then, fur ah don't think he's received the message yet.'(5)

Anger filled the Lord of Mandos then, and without thinking he launched himself at the laughing memory.

But of course, memories were as smoke and instead of a tussle, Mandos found himself sprawled belly first on the ground. The boy's laughter behind him now.

'Is this fit ye intend tae fecht the King? Aat could hardly kill a mortal, let alane a craiter as substantial as he is noo.'(6)

Rising from the mist covered ground, the Lord of Mandos turned to face his blue faced shadow.

'What else do I have to strike him with? My hands are my only allies now.'

'Is aat a fact?'(7)

'Well…what would you suggest, that I follow your lead and stand as a ghost before him, hurling insults?'

Ah fair go suggest,' said the boy. 'Aat if ye're gaun tae fecht a king o the dead, ye micht wint an army o the creatures. Noo far micht ye find een o those?' (8)

And with a shuddering jolt, the Lord of the Dead finally found himself awake again.

(1(1) 'Well now,'

(2(2) 'Who would ever be dumb enough to call you that?'

(3(3) 'I mean you're hardly a Lord of anything, let alone the dead, what with that Fëanor running around.'

(4(4) Who doesn't know the King of the Dead?'

(5(5) 'You may want to go and tell him that, then, for I don't think he's received the message yet.'

(6(6) 'Is this how you intend to fight the King? That could hardly kill a mortal, let alone a creature as substantial as he is now.'

(7(7) 'Is that a fact?'

(8(8) 'I would suggest,' said the boy. 'That if you're going to fight a king of the dead, you might want an army of the creatures. Now, where might you find one of those?'