Note: the conlang of a conlang returns with a vengeance this chapter. The author's notes at the bottom have translations.
Sauron had yet to work out to his satisfaction why the elf was here. Because I want to help you was not reason enough; what did he hope to gain, what drove him? He was a puzzle that Sauron found himself needing to solve. He had thought of taking the answers he sought from the elf's body, but he had tried so once before and it had availed him not: though he remembered little, he did remember the frustration and the failure. Yet Sauron still wished to open up the elf and discover his secrets, take him apart to learn how he worked. Celebrimbor held some power of fascination, some power of attraction, some quality worth coveting, and Sauron would learn what it was.
His presence was useful too; the elf was a needed distraction. Sauron had made a choice to be more than intolerable, unending, consuming loss and he devoted himself to not thinking of that which had eaten at him. It had been perfect and admirable, his Ring, but as of yet he knew no way to reclaim it and it would do him no good for its absence to consume his mind, not till he had a way to recover it. But as a distraction the elf was an enjoyable one, and a good teacher. Sauron would need to relearn the lore he had lost; with it he might find a way to regain the Ring, move backwards through history perhaps, or pull it forward to the time he was moving through now, and he remembered Celebrimbor's interest in time, and his own interest in Celebrimbor.
That day the elf was talking of seismographs and waves and Sauron was not listening. He instead watched how the elf moved his hands as he spoke: perfect those hands were, and graceful in movement. Of a sudden a memory came to him of how they had looked when he was dissecting them. The recollection was tinged with a mix of rage and pleasure, but he felt none of that now, just a certain wondering curiosity, the bones and tendons fascinating for whom they belonged to. The traitor had well-earned the destruction, but Sauron thought he preferred those clever hands whole.
The elf was still talking; Sauron continued to ignore his words and stared at him. It was no hardship: his body was well-made, strong and beautiful, with even features and elegant hands. The shadow in his night-grey eyes was new but the shape and color were not, and his hair was as coal black as he recalled it being, strangely short but a fine contrast to his pale skin. The elf did wear color — today his garments, finer than practical for travel, were in shades of muted rust and silver — but his person itself had little, save for the flush of his lips. His voice was deeply pleasant too, and if Sauron concentrated he could see the sound waves that carried it through the air. He recalled how exquisitely that fair voice had pled for mercy. He recalled Celebrimbor singing a hymn to Elbereth and how his voice had been lovelier than the stars he praised. Somewhat to Sauron's surprise, the memory was tinged with a fondness; perhaps later he would bid him sing again.
You were my friend once, the elf had said, and listening to him now, hearing the elegance of his thoughts, Sauron saw that it was likely true. Thief, he reminded himself, and strangely it brought out a pang of hurt from deep within him, and the sense of a distant loss, lesser and fainter than the loss of the Ring and yet the same.
"Sauron?" Celebrimbor said. "Are you listening?"
"I have not seen the need to add anything; you may continue," Sauron said, and smiled at him, showing his teeth. He kept the canines sharp, whatever form he was in; he found it amusing how they made the elf flinch at times. But he did not flinch now, instead raised an eyebrow, the look on his face one of… he was unimpressed, Sauron realized with displeasure.
The elf rolled his eyes. "I asked you if you remembered anything about the internal composition of Ambar. Or if you remembered how it had been made, when you and your fellows worked with your old master Aule to shape the rocks of this Arda. I know your memory is near-nonexistent when it comes to events before we met — you hide it less well than you think — but perhaps you still have impressions of how you and your kind sung the world into being and descended into it, or of Aule your once-leader."
Celebrimbor had told him of Aule and his fellows, the Valar who deluded themselves into thinking that they were worthy of ruling Arda. At the time, Sauron had remembered nothing of them and very little of He-Who-Arose-in-Might — Morgoth, the elf called him — whom he had chosen to serve. He tried to cast his mind back. Facts came easiest to him, events less so. It was difficult enough to remember when the Ring had existed and difficult to remember Ost-in-Edhil, for all that the elf he had known then walked beside him now, his mere presence bringing forth once-lost memories. Anything before then seemed unreachable; now he tried to reach not for a person or event but for the feel of what the world had been in those early days before the Lamps when the world was formed.
He remembered a force he had once served, more a distant, half-remembered concept than a person, one who took pleasure in creating and ordering, one who had been elements and interactions, shaping and changing state, the earth and the fires of the earth that had swallowed up his Ring. He supposed it was Aule, or what would later become him, for the memory was tinged with a vague contempt and disappointment. But it was not all the earth, for others had shaped it too: a memory of worship and volcanoes came to him, and there had been a third power too, one of things that grew and lived and died.
"Me, I was always more interested in what you call chemistry," said Sauron, "and you may look to more than Aule's people, for the rock and minerals of this Ambar were not made solely by them. The fossils you are so very fond of course come from the creatures that She-of-Life shepherded from their simplest beginnings to their multitude of forms and whose corpses were replaced by rock. Her creatures use and make minerals too. For that matter, some rock itself is quite literally made up of Yavanna's creations — I remember diatomaceous earth; perhaps there are other sorts."
"A very graveyard that," said the elf, "and of creatures so very beautiful in life, if you have the lenses to view them. Useful too."
"Yes," Sauron agreed. "I seem to recall using it to stabilize explosives. Not that seeing creatures caught in unplanned detonation is without its amusements."
The elf opened his mouth but closed it again.
"I rather regret the work we did on nitro groups, however interesting it was at the time," he said after a moment. "But anyways, I am aiming to find some fossils here. If Avathar is genuinely younger in time than the rest of Arda, the life that came before will likely be better preserved in the stone, and more abundant.
"Also, I am curious and your other senses were always useful," Celebrimbor added. "There are depositions laid just above those of environments like this and in them all the insects were much larger. Centipedes the size of oliphants and dragonflies the size of eagles, and we see none of those here. There are great spiders here, of course, but they are not natural. Could it be the concentration of oxygen? Fires do not wish to light in Avathar, though I think that unnatural too, a remnant of Ungoliant's stain, her great hunger."
Sauron considered the air about them for the first time. "The surrounding gases are composed of, as far as I can tell, a little less than a fifth… something reactive, something that grabs."
"Oxygen," the elf told him. "Less than a fifth, you say? So the atmosphere here is slightly different than in the rest of Arda, which is – it is part of the same atmosphere, and moves through time and space with the rest of the world does; I wonder…"
Sauron let his body blink; he had found it helped anchor himself when he gave the flesh he wore freedom to act as it wished, and now it wished to express some mild surprise: had the elf not perceived that time did not run steady but instead flowed in fits and starts in the land they were in?
He did not tell the elf that, but thought instead of how his hands itched to touch the elf, an almost compulsive need, and found it somewhat worrisome that the urge came from his own self and not the flesh he wore. He recalled how the elf's mouth had tasted of iron-rich hemoglobin and was disconcerted that he knew that. What exactly was he to me, and I to him?
He reached out and grabbed Celebrimbor's wrists, pulled them up and pulled him close so they stood chest to chest. The elf stared at him defiantly (he was so often defiant, Sauron thought, and found he rather liked it), but while he tested the grip he did not try to pull away; he would not have been able to break free of Sauron's hands if he tried and undoubtedly knew it.
Sauron rather enjoyed having him trapped so close to him and he leaned forward to whisper in his ear, "I could destroy you, and there is nothing you could do to stop me."
He had said it to see his reaction, and when he pulled back to look was not displeased: his elf glared at him, fire in his eyes.
"I am quite aware of that," he said stiffly, but his voice changed, "I, after all, am no Lúthien."
Sauron released him and stepped back; he did not know the name but felt like he ought to.
"Who is she," he asked, "this Lúthien?"
Pity came to the elf's eyes and that Sauron did not like.
"Oh. She was a woman who defeated — and humiliated — you. You held her mortal lover captive and she fought you to save him. Hers is a long story, and you played a small but important part in it. There are many songs written about her. I could sing one to you?"
Since their initial meeting, Celebrimbor had not opened his mind to him again nor told him much of the past. Sauron himself was remembering more and more, but mostly deep lore, and occasionally memories of the elf. It was to be expected, considering who he was with and what they talked of, but the only thing that bothered him more than not knowing was the loss of the Ring. And he would not mind hearing the elf sing.
"Do so then," he said, and added to see how the elf would react, "I should rather like to hear you sing."
It made Celebrimbor smile; like all of his other smiles it was pleasing. "There are many songs, and all of them are quite long. I shall sing just a part of one, beginning when Lúthien first came to your lair together with the great hound Huan, my uncle of sorts. For context, you were about to kill her lover Beren. It is justly and amusingly unflattering to you. I find this section quite enjoyable."
The elf sat down on a fallen tree trunk and began, "There Beren lies. His grief no tear, his despair no horror has nor fear…"
Sauron listened and half-remembered storm-cloud hair and teeth at his neck and the compulsive need to surrender, escape. The elf was right: it was not flattering to him, and Sauron admitted to himself that it was not wrong to be so, for he had lost. The memories were incomplete and seemed curiously distant, with no emotional valence: he would have expected to feel some bitter rage, or fear, and yet there was nothing. But Sauron had been another person in that time, for the Ring had not yet been made.
The elf stopped and Sauron tossed him a waterskin, and watched his throat intently as he threw back his head and swallowed. He did not remember how he killed him: had he set his teeth to his neck and torn through it, as one of his werewolves would have done?
"You can continue," Sauron said to him when the elf was done drinking. He would rather like to hear the rest of Lúthien's tale; he would rather like to hear the elf sing it.
"Maybe later," he said, and quirked his lips. "I tried to bring forth song-visions, but though I mostly failed the attempt still tired me. I have no gift for such things."
"But you have a lovely voice." Sauron thought of what he did remember from when he had put the elf to torment. "You sing as beautifully as you begged."
It did not, as he had expected, seem to make Celebrimbor frightened or angry; instead he rolled his eyes in exasperation. "You're terrible. I don't know why I'm here."
Yes, why are you here?
Sauron came closer to stand in front of him.
"I suppose I should be glad that you came, Elda. If nothing else, you're entertaining."
"You can call me by my name," the elf murmured; his eyes were speculative. "I know you remember it."
"Celebrimbor," murmured Sauron, then switched to Quenya, though he did not know why. "Tyelperinquar; yes, I do remember."
Sauron's memories came back to him in bits, sometimes flashes of an event, sometimes an image, sometimes a knowledge, a renewed understanding of how the world worked. One of those understandings came to him then: the knowledge that Celebrimbor was his, his possession. It had hurt, yes, when Celebrimbor had betrayed him and stolen what was his; it was unforgivable. Celebrimbor had stolen himself away from Sauron too, but theft of an object did not mean that it no longer belonged to its rightful owner.
"Tyelpe, Tyelpinkenya," he continued, contemplative, and reached out to grasp his chin and tilt his face up so they saw eye to eye; there was something that stirred in them. Sauron was not certain what it was, but there was for once no fear, and now the lack of it pleased him, though he knew not why. "Yes, I think I might."
The elf — Celebrimbor — smiled tentatively. Sauron stared at him and wished he remembered how the muscles and nerves moved to make such an expression; he wondered if he had peeled the skin back to see them.
"But you call me Sauron," he said as he brushed his fingertips along Celebrimbor's cheekbone to linger at his ear, and noted how he tilted his head into the touch, very slightly, before pulling away.
"Well, it's a name well-earned. You are abhorrent," Celebrimbor said, but he sounded almost amused.
"I was Annatar to you once," Sauron answered, for all that he only remembered the name because he had heard it in Celebrimbor's memory.
The elf snorted. "You introduced yourself as such and I did not know what else you were named till later. But-"
Celebrimbor broke off, a curious cast coming to his face but his voice was gentle. "Sauron, do you not remember those other names of yours?"
He did not. It was precious to me, he thought, it was admirable, and he did not know why in that moment he saw the Ring, lost and gone, and for a while he was caught up in mourning for it.
The world spun on its axis, and as time passed Sauron's presence grew ever more cohesive; Celebrimbor told himself he was glad of it, but it was half a lie. Sauron managed to mostly stick to that old body of his, the one he had worn in Eregion: it boded well for Sauron's recovery and was an aesthetically pleasing form, but at times Celebrimbor saw him out of the corner of his eye and panicked, or grew impossibly sad.
Sauron was as a child new to study, but his mind was quick as ever and teaching him what he had once known was far more enjoyable than teaching an apprentice: even as unlearned as he had become, he made leaps of thought that at times Celebrimbor could barely follow, sometimes incoherent and sometimes insightful; his mind was less ordered than it had been, thoughts sometimes disconnected, but his old brilliance had not been lost. Celebrimbor had sorely missed it. He almost regretted that it was all theoretical and he almost wished they had a forge at their disposal, or a workroom, but when he did, he remembered the last great work Annatar had made and grew chill and thought that optics and organometallic compounds were safer.
All the same it was not unpleasant to talk to Sauron, and occasionally gratifying to hear him agree and sympathize when Celebrimbor complained about his academic rivals, or about the Lambengolmor's insistence that poetry consists of words only and not words and equations together, or how certain people in Tirion were still saying that the smaller-than-light microscope — which had been chiefly the collaboration of Thandir, Sigrik of Khazad-dûm, and Celebrimbor's mother Súlin — must have been a creation of Feanor's, so clever and useful it was. In Eregion, Sauron might have combed out Celebrimbor's hair as he ranted, or massaged his shoulders; he did not now but did make the same cutting remarks about those who would disagree that Celebrimbor had always found so soothing.
A day ago they had come across a stream and followed along with it as it meandered its way east, growing and widening as it went. The water was a vivid, unnatural blue, that of a bright aquamarine, and almost shocking to see: Avathar was green and it was brown and it was white and grey and black, but other colors were absent, save the occasional red that marked poisonous creatures; there were no flowers in the land, no fruits or colorful animals.
Celebrimbor felt free to wade in the water; he trusted, more or less, in both his own and Sauron's senses and perceptions, and he felt nothing malicious in it and Sauron said there was nothing ill. He was walking on the river just then, skipping along from rock to rock, shoes off, trousers rolled up and in his shirtsleeves: Avathar was a cold place but that day the sun's light had some warmth in it and it shook away the chill.
He said to Sauron, walking on the bank with their luggage, "Thauzan is your name, of course."
Celebrimbor had just that morning begun teaching Sauron Tauzhalamba, the language of the Ashtandiri, using it to illustrate and teach theoretical frameworks; linguistics had always caught Sauron's attention and it was safer than something that might touch on Ringcraft.
"Or Annatar, of course," Sauron replied. "Intriguing that some words change very little and others change to the point where they're completely unintelligible. Thauzan is transparent enough. Though you say it descends from the Quendya of the Vanyar, which is not the dialect I remember, nor the one you speak. Did the latter change z to r?"
"It's the Exilic version, our Quenya, and I refuse to speak any others; the superiority of some Amanyar grows old," said Celebrimbor, who generally played up his Middle-earth dialect when speaking to those who had seen the Trees. "And yes, it did make that change; we can discuss that and other changes later if you wish."
"I do wish," said Sauron.
"Then certainly. But to return to names, my own is Chalharikker; you can use that and avoid diminutives or 'that elf,'" Celebrimbor added tartly.
Sauron smiled and when he spoke there was an over-sweet fondness in his voice. "And here I thought shina 'lhanyava worked just fine, ai Chalhikkanyava in ivaranda 'mmalha."
"I am not yours and you're terrible," Celebrimbor said, rolling his eyes, and rather annoyed that Sauron had correctly surmised that 'traitor' was ivaranda. "Samicha thauza. I trust that one's easy to translate."
Out of the corner of his eye Celebrimbor saw Sauron tilt his head and turned his own to look at him. He wavered a bit when he jumped to the next rock and ignored Sauron's smirk.
But Sauron said, "You used a different construction for a similar adjectival phrase earlier when you said the river water is cold: nin shirava nas ringa. But to tell me that I am terrible — and really, Chalharikker, I'm beginning to suspect you mean that affectionately — you used the verb sami."
"Both verbs are what we call a copula," Celebrimbor told him, "which connects the subject to either a noun or an adjective: predicate nominals and adjectives. Tauzhalamba has two verbs for that type of construction. It also has two ways to say you own or have something, and both copular phrases and possessives have a distinction between what we call alienable and inalienable. Alienable things are fleeting, not permanent, things you may own or that may describe you, but need not always; things you can give away. The inalienable is that which you are, that which you cannot give away, the eternal. 'You are terrible' is an excellent example of the latter. For inalienable states, possessions, and qualities you'd use the verb sami; the negative of it is panda. Samin tama, I am a smith, and samin kachaima, I am curious. That applies to permanent ownership too."
Celebrimbor paused for a moment to move closer to the shore — there were rapids ahead — then continued, "For an example of a possessive, my relationship to my body is inalienable, for all that you took my old one from me. Saminyas re means 'I have a body' —note that for possession the verb needs to be marked for the object —but you don't have the same relationship to the flesh; would you call your body inalienable?"
"Alienable, I suppose." Sauron shrugged. "It's no different, really, than the clothes you wear, and as changeable."
There is a world in which you would have used inalienable, so tied to your body you would have been, thought Celebrimbor, and for the same reason as Melian. The thought saddened him. Oh Sauron, how did we end up here? What could have been in a better world!
"Fair enough," he said aloud. "Though if you consider your body the equivalent of clothing, you would use a different expression: 'I am wearing these clothes' would be 'I-have-them on me these clothes.' Hazhanyalha nissa shina happar."
Sauron answered. "Hazhanyas nissa vana then, assuming vana is the equivalent of fana. It's a crude analogy, to compare what your people call a 'veil' to clothing, but accurate. So, from what you said I will infer that there are three basic constructions: nau for alienable predicate nominals and adjectives, the verb hazha for alienable possessions, and the verb sami for both inalienable predicatives and possessives, with panda as the negative of sami."
"Yes, exactly," Celebrimbor replied. "Though while many words must be inalienable or alienable, often the choice of which to use – in particular with adjectives – is semantically guided. And general rules established, it is the nature of language to make exceptions. Some words do not fall in the expected category. Jewelry is considered inalienable so you would use sami; toes are considered alienable, for all that they are a part of your body – though to be fair, toes can be removed, as you proved to me once. Hair and descriptions of it are alienable too: van vena. I used va there: it is the negative of nau."
"Vena… from waina? Well, you're not blond. Just as well, golden hair is lovely on some but you're far more pleasing as you are."
Celebrimbor ran a hand through his short black hair and ignored Sauron's opinion of it. "Hardly blond. Hazha negates in the standard way: Launyas hazha vindassa malha. All are full verbs, by the way, and can take any conjugation. Had someone asked me in Mandos, where I spent quite some time bodiless after you murdered me, I would have said asaumanyas re."
"Are you going to go on about that forever?" Sauron asked. "You're perfectly fine now; do all Elves hold such grudges?"
"You—" Celebrimbor began indignantly but stopped when Sauron held out a hand to him.
"Well?" said Sauron. "We've almost reached the rapids and even if you had been planning on walking through them I doubt you'd want to go over that waterfall."
They had reached the rapids, which Celebrimbor had been planning on walking through, but beyond them was the roar of a waterfall and a sharp cliff. Celebrimbor glared but took Sauron's hand, letting him help him onto the land.
Sauron looked smug. It was, Celebrimbor thought sourly, his default expression.
"So," said Sauron, once they were both on the bank. "Would saminyas shina 'lha be the proper construction?"
Celebrimbor drew himself up straight. "I am not yours," he said heatedly, "I do not belong to you." You yourself saw to that.
Sauron smiled slowly, looking amused. "But don't you? You came back to me for no other reason than to help me - perhaps you sought me out as the Ring did, longing to return to its master?"
"No," said Celebrimbor. "And worse, your grammar is incorrect. You can't use sami in reference to close family or friends: you don't own them. You could say samin vari, 'I am a husband,' or samin malha, atar, 'a friend, a father.' But to say you have a husband would be isas unyan vari, 'there exists with me a husband,' using the verb i¸ which is used for location, among other things. Note that the prefix u-, cognate to Quenya ó-, requires its complement to take the dative. Though for children you could also say that they were given to you, just as in Quenya and Sindarin both."
He looked around. The cliff in front of them was sheer, and tall enough that Celebrimbor did not wish to jump off it. "There must be a path down."
"Undoubtedly," said Sauron and handed Celebrimbor one of the packs that he had been carrying. Celebrimbor had earlier been curious if Sauron would put up a fuss or refuse to carry all of the things he had brought, but he had just made a couple mocking comments, as he would have done in Eregion; he had never avoided menial tasks if he thought there was a reason to perform them.
"Over here," Sauron said. It was not a path like to those elsewhere, for the lack of animals to tread upon them, but a sloped outcrop of rock and dirt that looked passable. They pushed aside webs and scrambled down the steep incline. One of the rocks gave way in the loose dirt and the last step Celebrimbor took was unsteady; he might have fallen had Sauron not steadied him. Celebrimbor swayed forwards and found himself caught in Sauron's arms.
The waterfall roared next to them, but Sauron spoke softly. "Close friends and family?" he murmured. "Celebrimbor, are you saying that you consider me such? Don't think I haven't noticed how you call me by the second person informal."
Sauron was right, to Celebrimbor's disgruntlement: he did use the informal 'you' when speaking to Sauron, for though he had originally tried to keep to the formal, the habit of four centuries was hard to break.
"You cut me open and held my liver in your hand," he answered, stepping away from Sauron. "I'd call that a close relationship, for a particular value of both 'close' and 'relationship.'"
Sauron laughed at that, but when he opened his mouth Celebrimbor spoke before he could, not wishing to continue the particular line of the conversation further.
"Let's walk up ahead a ways, see if we can find some suitable sand or dirt to draw in so I can show you the tengwar mode the Tazhalya use. You'll be quite appalled, I think, and justly."
They did not have far to go, for not far ahead the river widened into a placid pool with sandy banks. Celebrimbor found a stick to write in the sand; Sauron was indeed appalled at Tazhalamba's tengwar mode.
"A child could come up with a better system," he said with scorn. "How can it both preserve distinctions no longer in the spoken language — representations of the vowels are particularly egregious — and use the same tengwa for phonemically and phonetically distinct sounds?"
"You're quite right," said Celebrimbor lazily, splashing through the water to sit on a fallen tree-trunk. "I'm sure you would do a far better job of it: grammatology is your true calling. You were fond of formal language too; most of the thought schools that came from Middle-earth still use the mathematical symbols that were largely of your development. Some people forsook them — your particular, well, you-ness is something of an impediment — but it is a better system than the rather convoluted Amanyarin one and I at least see no reason to abandon it for something worse just because the inventor turned out to be the evil Lieutenant of Morgoth."
Sauron, rubbing out the tengwar and tehtar with his foot, looked curious.
"At one point," Celebrimbor continued, dangling his feet in the water, "you came up with a ridiculously complex and over-detailed formal tengwar of logical proofs, and took two bound books to prove that one plus one equaled two. As a joke, but in full seriousness too."
"Had one plus one equaling two been formally proved before?" asked Sauron.
"I believe yours was the first," Celebrimbor said, grinning.
"Well there you go. Intuition alone is a faulty foundation and now you are certain of the answer to that particular equation. You're welcome," said Sauron blandly.
Celebrimbor laughed, half at Sauron and half at the small fish nibbling at his toes, tickling. He sensed nothing more than curiosity from the fish and Sauron had said nothing, so he thought it safe enough.
"More jawed fish," he told Sauron. "The kind without armor."
"Oh?" Sauron began to walk around the shore, studying the water. "And another one of the flattened ones with what might be proto-limbs."
He bent down. In a movement too fast for Celebrimbor to track, he caught the fish and lifted it out of the water to examine it.
"Hmm. I do believe this one has eight sets of digital bones in each fin, not the five I might have expected. Your knife isn't the best tool, but I would quite like to dissect this specimen."
Celebrimbor froze. After a moment he said, carefully, "I would rather not. I lost all interest in dissection after being the subject of it myself."
"Did you now," Sauron murmured. He set the limbed fish back in the water and stared at Celebrimbor speculatively, before sighing.
"I wish I remembered that," he said wistfully. "Less than for the satisfaction of seeing a traitor punished, but because I would like to know how you looked."
Celebrimbor blinked at him, at a complete and utter loss, and he had no idea how to respond.
"The word for fish in Tauzhalamba is linge," he chose to say instead, "with the stem linji-. We might call that fish of yours Linjive-tallathar: eight-fingered-breath-fish."
"You seem so uneasy, Tyelpe," Sauron said.
"I wonder why," said Celebrimbor under his breath. "Oh wait, I don't."
Sauron laughed at that. "Eight-fingered-breath-fish it is then, if you want. Lacking in poetry, but certainly descriptive."
Celebrimbor looked at him with a wry smile before sinking back to lay on the log, bathing in the sun like a turtle. He let an arm dangle, hand in the pleasantly cool water, and wriggled his fingers when the small fish came to investigate them. I really shouldn't like you, he thought, yet at times I still do, even now.
Eventually he rolled off and made his way back to the beach.
"I'd offer you dinner," he told Sauron, "but you don't need to eat and I do need to watch supplies."
"There's plenty of fish here," said Sauron. "If you're concerned with your supply of lembas, surely fish are less objectionable than insects or fungi, though I remain unsure why you categorically refuse the latter two."
"Because they're not food," Celebrimbor said automatically. But Sauron was not wrong: Avathar had no fruit, no grains or grasses, and the lembas, dried fruit and nuts he had would not last forever. Fish were unobjectionable. It might be interesting to see how they tasted, creatures lost to the rest of Arda. Yet he was loathe to hurt the ones that swam in the pool, for the small ones had been so curious about him.
"A bite or two of a lembas is fine," he decided. "I'm not overly concerned about my supply of food. There's plenty; don't mistake me for those mortals who need to eat a large amount every day. And lembas provide no less energy than a full meal and some."
Sauron shrugged. "As you wish. You're the one who requires nutrition," he said dismissively, and sat down next to Celebrimbor, who had settled against a large boulder.
Once Celebrimbor had taken his two bites, put the lembas away, and stretched out, Sauron turned to him.
"To return to our discussion about predicate nominals," he said, "which would you use to describe yourself: samin ivaranda or nan ivaranda? Are you someone who is perpetually a traitor or was your treachery temporary?"
Celebrimbor looked back, not yet irritated but not far from it, and decided to answer in seriousness. "That's a question you should be asking yourself, Lord of Ruin, not me. Forget about whatever we did to each other; do you remember the vision we once shared? You wanted to heal the world at one point, raise it to its fullest potential and beyond – you saw as much in my memories. I don't know what you remember of your actions, but I can tell you this: you brought destruction instead, and ugliness. You made the world worse. Is it not that which is betrayal?"
Sauron tilted his head and then moved closer and onto his side so that he was leaning over Celebrimbor, and set his hand on the rock, arm straight and near trapping Celebrimbor against the rock.
"I have been remembering more," Sauron said as he gently ran the back of his other hand down Celebrimbor's cheek, a gleam in his eyes. "I have remembered some of your own deeds, Celebrimbor. Jewelsmith. Ringmaker. I know now that it was not a single Ring you stole, but Three, and that you betrayed me in forging them."
Celebrimbor flinched away, instinctively terrified at Sauron saying Three and bit his tongue rather than beg.
"Congratulations on regaining more of your memories," he said, pushing down the panic. "At this rate, you'll remember who Morgoth was slightly before he returns in the Dagor Dagorath."
Sauron looked at him, eyes soft, and laid a hand against his throat; at that Celebrimbor could not help but let out a whimper.
"Your heart races, Celebrimbor, I feel it against my hand," he said, "and you tremble. Shh, I'm not going to ask for the Rings. I know they are beyond my reach, for now."
There was one Ring that was not beyond Sauron's reach and Celebrimbor resolutely did not think of Narya, hanging on a chain around his neck. It was not difficult to keep it from the surface of his mind, not with the thudding fear that drove out other thoughts.
"Shh," Sauron said again, keeping his hand against Celebrimbor's throat and using his thumb to force his head up. "I'm not going to harm you. I take care of my things."
Some small part of Celebrimbor's mind noted the last sentence with both analytical interest at what it implied and a deep, deep annoyance, but mostly he stared wide-eyed at Sauron and tried to keep the panic at bay.
"But look to yourself, traitor. I see now that for all your airs of superiority, for all your hypocritical self-righteousness, you're no different than me, save that your own creations were not as great and that you betrayed the vision we once shared."
The fierce anger that rose up from within him overpowered any fear and he batted Sauron's hand away.
"Like you?" Celebrimbor spat, leaning in closer. "You think I am anything like you? Look at yourself, Abhorred One, Foul One, Stinker."
"Again with the insults." Sauron tilted his head, a little sweet smile on his face. "I admit, it's been enjoyable watching you, learning how you lie, learning how you deny the truth of things."
"Sauron," said Celebrimbor, deliberate and sure, "in this I do not lie. We are not alike. You wished to rule all that was in fair Middle-earth; you made yourself a god as well as a king to those you enslaved. But I am not like you. It was not the will to dominate all life that I poured into my Rings, nor the desire for gold nor the drive to conquer. I sought understanding, not control. I wanted my creations to be things to comfort the weary, to preserve all things unstained, to make all that is blessed. To…"
Celebrimbor closed his eyes. To heal, he thought, helping what was hurt become what it might have been in an Arda unmarred, that might have been and may yet be.
He opened his eyes and said, "I hate you. Not least for that Ring you made. You threw away so much, and for naught. Even you yourself you destroyed. I know you saw the conversation we had when we first met, and I know you spoke the truth then when you spoke of making the world better, raising it up to heights unreached. Perhaps we both betrayed what was between us, or perhaps just you who betrayed it, but it was you who was traitor to our shared vision, I the loyal one."
There was now the first flickering of anger in Sauron's presence.
"You think I am the one who deserves hate? For I do remember now," he said. "I do remember my great vision, and I remember that for a time you were my servant, helping me strive for it. But then you opposed me from your own lack of ambition. You didn't do what was right. You failed us both in opposing our goals."
"Right?" Celebrimbor spat, sitting up so he could hiss into Sauron's face. "See what right got you: suffering and horror for nothing, for failure. Sauron, you were wrong: the hurt you caused is near immeasurable and much can never be repaired, not in this Arda Hastaina. If you had just destroyed yourself only perhaps it would be forgivable — actually, no, I could not forgive that either. You were precious once too, as you say, and threw away everything good in you. And what you did to the world… Oh Lord of Gifts, how could you?"
"I made the world better," Sauron hissed back. "And you, you stole my Rings from me, and stole too your own skill, lesser but still of great value."
But Sauron sat back then, tilting his head to examine Celebrimbor. "You know," he said contemplatively, "I see now why I discarded you. A pity, a great pity, but sometimes impurities are too deep to remove. Is that why you keep talking about how I killed you; is it some grudge born of your own — unjustified — hurt?"
Celebrimbor jumped up, took a stride away, then spun back to look at Sauron. He cried, "Yes, I am hurt! You hurt me! You called yourself my friend, said I was your friend, and you murdered me, tore me apart — how could you!"
Sauron seemed vaguely taken aback. "If you were my friend," he said, "then surely in hurting you I hurt myself as well. Do you doubt that it was necessary? Death is a just fate for traitors."
Celebrimbor made some inarticulate noise at that.
But Sauron continued, "Yes, that is part of why you behave in such a way as you do. That and jealousy of course, the most obvious reason. Your Three may have been powerful, but nothing could approach the One in might and beauty, in how admirable it was."
Those words calmed Celebrimbor, made his distress and anger cold, for he saw how Sauron could be hurt in return.
He smiled. "You should be the jealous one. The One was hated and loathed and the world rejoiced when it was melted and unmade. None mourned it and none mourned you. No one found either you or your Ring admirable; no one found it precious. That's what you made yourself, Stinker, a maker of art whose art people wanted to destroy. No one wanted to destroy my works; they praise them instead. Such power you had within you, such might, and yet I the greater artificer, mine the greater works. You are one of those who created the world, and mighty among your kind, yet in art you were outdone by an Elf. It was I who made precious things and you, at the end, you a failure."
Sauron stood up too and laughed, something cruel in his eyes, and he reached for Celebrimbor's hands, too fast for him to back away. "Such fierce words, Celebrimbor, such pride, such a fine way to conceal what you now lack. Oh yes, I see that now; I see how you lessened yourself. It's a pity, isn't it? You once had such great ambition, and I remember you had great skill too, though lesser than mine. But look at you now. You say you know me, brightest, but I know you too and I perceive what you have become. You have lost that ambition, failed your greatness. No wonder you feel contempt for yourself, buried under your prickliness. It's justified, that contempt. Have you made anything more than trinkets since you returned from death?"
Sauron's grip was too strong to break free of and Celebrimbor was struck dumb, staring wide-eyed at Sauron. He had no words for refutation, for Sauron had only spoken his own thoughts, the ones that had bitten his heart and it was a dagger Celebrimbor himself had made with his own failures of ambition.
"Your hands," Sauron murmured, and brought them up to his lips to kiss the knuckles, very gently, the slightest brush of skin against skin. He did not look away from Celebrimbor's eyes. "I think I always liked them. You betrayed more than me, you betrayed the skill in these hands. Do they quake now to bind power into matter? I see you; I see you don't have the stomach or will to attempt something even a tenth as great as the least of the Rings. It's quite pathetic, don't you think? Your hands precious, your mind brilliant: what a shame it is that they are wasted on someone now unworthy of them."
Celebrimbor was cold and attacked and weeks of Sauron's presence had left him near at his limit. He smiled again. "And yet my works survive. That Ring that you made and treasured about everything else is gone forever. What was it like, when it was unmade? What did you feel — agony? Fear of death? Did you spin willingly into that loss that you could not pull yourself out of without aid? Did you fall into it with terror at never again being yourself, or did you just weep?"
He twisted his wrists so that he could grasp Sauron's hands in turn and leaned in, chest to chest, tilted his head up so he could say softly against Sauron's lips, "You will never again hold it. You will never get it back. It's gone, that precious thing; the only thing you loved is gone forever."
Celebrimbor pulled back and watched, not unpleased, as Sauron went still, slipping into that state of desperate loss that Celebrimbor had hoped to push him into. Celebrimbor only felt contempt and a grim, vicious satisfaction.
"I need to get away from you," he said but Sauron did not respond, all his focus turned inward.
Celebrimbor made a disgusted noise and pulled his hands free. He did not look back as he scrambled up the bank and walked away into the forest.
Once on the top of the bank the shrubs and horse tails disappeared in favor of true trees, the ones whose fossilized leaves the Mírdain had in Middle-earth named amuntesáne, towering trees with fern-like leaves and smooth trunks of conifer-like wood, their tops unseeable though the fog. Normally he could walk between their trunks without impediment, but here there were webs that choked them off, like fences with the trees as posts and there was only one path to follow. Celebrimbor supposed he should not follow it, but as the alternative was returning to Sauron, he kept walking.
Not far from the river the path led to a grove and alone in the center stood a tree. It was shorter and thicker than those around it, but still tall and straight; its bark was pale and its trunk bare of branches till far up but its roots were a tangle.
Celebrimbor sank down between the exposed roots, a great exhaustion in his soul. More than anything, he wanted a drink. Barring that, he wanted to cry. Instead he stared forward, unseeing, till he closed his eyes and willed himself into true, dreamless sleep. Ever since he had come across Sauron the first time, a good dozen years ago, he has slept often without dreams, often with closed eyes, for he had not wished to dream, and in dreams remember. Since he had returned to Avathar he had kept his sleep to the waking sort, of dreams and open eyes and seeing the world, not wanting something to come upon him unawares, but now he pushed himself to true sleep, for in it he would not feel or think. In that moment, there seemed nothing more restful or desirable.
He slept. When he woke, he felt the roots creeping about him, more like tentacles than limbs, and millipedes crawling upon him; he could feel the many feet as they slithered about.
Celebrimbor thrashed about instinctively but when the roots tightened, he went still and tried to ignore the insects, hoping they would not start to secrete digestive fluid. Carefully he reached into one of his pockets for the fire-starter: if need be he could try to burn the wood; it would not fail to ignite if he called upon Narya.
But he reached out too with his mind and sighed when he felt the pain of the tree. In its heart was no hatred but instead a gnawing hunger and buried underneath that a desolation and aching loneliness. A pity for it welled up within him, drowning out his initial panic.
"Please don't eat me," he said to the tree, hoping it would understand the meaning. "Would you like to talk instead?"
He perceived a strange sense of wonder, as if the tree had never met anyone who was aware and responsive.
Celebrimbor's mind must be just as alien to the tree as its was to him, but that was not to say they had nothing in common. Hunger had never bothered him, let alone consumed him in such a way, but: I have been lonely too, he thought to it.
He had been. Celebrimbor was by nature content in his own company. He would seek solitude out at times when he wearied of the presence of others. If he had been asked before Sauron left Eregion, he would have said he had never been lonely. But in Mandos a great desolation had come over him and he had felt utterly alone. Mandos was a place of solitude and he had no recollection of meeting another soul, but there was one person whose absence was a wound and he had been so certain he would never see him again. Another sin to lay at Sauron's feet, the pain of that.
"It can pass," he said, "being alone. It has for me." It was true enough. Whatever else Celebrimbor thought, and at times he would cast Sauron into the outer darkness if he had the power, he was not alone and he was not bored.
He said to the tree, "Wouldn't you like for us to talk? I know you're hungry but you can try eating the millipedes. And I could bring you a fish: they have nitrogen and phosphorus too — no wonder you're starved, poor as the soil seems to be here. There is a river nearby. In fact, I could tell you where it is and you might over time make your way there; I think you could summon the will to move, slow bit by bit."
There was little response from the tree, merely a sense of reflection, as if it were pondering things in what might be its mind, so Celebrimbor sent the feel of the water and the feel of food within it. It seemed to intrigue the tree: it finally let him loose and Celebrimbor breathed a great sigh of relief. The very first thing he did after standing up was brush away the millipedes with great haste and kick them towards the roots, but after that he did not move away but laid a hand on the pale straight trunk.
"Hello," he said belatedly and looked down. The millipedes had vanished. "I hope you enjoyed them," he told the tree and it answered with a faint sense of satisfaction.
It did not say anything else, but there was a sense of a silent awareness within it and Celebrimbor felt that he was being watched. He watched back, not speaking, but leaving his mind open, two beings looking at each other. He thought several hours had passed when his muscles began to cramp, and pulled back to stretch a bit.
The roots snapped around his ankles then, holding him in place, a senseless panic. Celebrimbor looked up in alarm at the tree's distress.
"No, no," he said, "I'm not going anywhere."
He frowned, thinking of how best to reassure it. Celebrimbor had always found stone easier to speak to than plants, the songs the rocks sung for the Eldar who shaped and lived among them easier to hear. (It still made him sad, at times impossibly sad, when he thought of the rocks of Eregion, so well loved, or those of Nargothrond, buried under the sea with no one to speak to them ever again.) It was song and attention that awoke rocks and trees, and song and speech that was said to have awoken the first Ents.
He sang, a simple child's song about the moon, and then a memory song about learning the paths of the stars, then a hymn of praise to the color of leaves as sunlight streamed through them. It seemed that the tree became more solid with each note, and then the branches began to move in time with the song and a hum came from the tree's bark. Out of curiosity, Celebrimbor began a round and was delighted to hear the tree pick up on it, its hum a line behind his.
When he stopped, the tree stopped humming and in his mind Celebrimbor heard thoughts that were not far from becoming words.
Who are you? You are awake, like I am. But you are not like me. Are there others like you?
"I am awake," Celebrimbor said softly. "And there are many others who are awake too, and of many kinds. I am so sorry that you have been alone all these years and that I am the first person you met. But I am glad too, to meet you and to speak with you. My people, the people of the stars, loved trees like you. We spoke to them in days of old and they spoke back. Those trees became Ents, who walked and spoke and lived, shepherds of the forests. The Ents spoke to trees unawakened too, trees that slept, and awakened others in turn; they were not lonely."
He felt a great longing; again it made him feel like weeping. Celebrimbor sank down to sit on a root, his back against the trunk.
He turned his attention back to the tree and patted one of the roots. "The trees I knew in other lands were different from those here," he said, and sent an image of Arvernien of old and an image of the forest where Fangorn the First lived, one of the Ents Galadriel had introduced to him long ago. A certain sense of fascination came to the tree. "I wish I could introduce you to Fangorn, actually. But he walks in lands far away, unreachable from here. The trees I knew in that land were different in some ways, but they might share a similarity. One of the ways they talked was through their roots, which were connected. Sometimes directly and sometimes through a mycorrhizal network, fungi that brought nutrients to the tree. You might have some of those, I think?"
Celebrimbor paused. He was not sure what it felt like for trees to talk to each other. He thought of what it had been like to work with Sauron, the touch of mind on mind, how they had understood each other's half-formed thoughts and insights that could not yet be put in words. Perhaps it was like such, the minds of the forest speaking without words through hyphae like nerves. Or perhaps they did use language; the Ents Celebrimbor had met did and he thought the tree would become like to those shepherds of the forest.
I cried out and no one answered. There was a pause. Till you. You heard me.
"I did hear you; you are not alone in this world. There are others too who will hear you and speak back."
But there was some disbelief in the heart of the tree. Or, not disbelief perhaps, but a lack of hope. Celebrimbor sighed once more, saddened. He touched Narya, hidden on a chain under his shirt, and reached out to it. It had the power to kindle hope where there was despair, to give strength against misery.
He frowned, gone suddenly cold. There was something in Narya that had not there when he made it, a faint hint of something foul and very familiar, a tiny shadow of darkness in Narya's fiery depths. Was this how Sauron had held together what self he had, threading it through the Great Rings? Sauron had never touched the Three, but they were his work too, as the One was Celebrimbor's. Yet there had only been one Lord of the Rings.
It was a reason not to call upon Narya. He did so anyways.
Celebrimbor had met trees with malice in their grain, in their rings of growth, ones with a hatred for things that move. There was no malice in the heartwood of the tree in front of him and he asked Narya to shower the tree in sunlight and call out the hope that lay buried within.
"If you let me, I'll stay with you for a little while," he said. "Not forever, I'm afraid, but before I leave we can figure out a way to introduce you to others who speak and listen."
Celebrimbor spent some time with the tree. Days perhaps, but he did not know how long; time was strange in Avathar and he did not trust his perception of how it passed.
He thought about Sauron at times, even worried about him, but told himself Sauron was in no danger. Celebrimbor knew something of the Ainur's nature, or he knew something about Sauron's nature — Sauron being an atypical example of his kind — and he knew what it meant for them to make a decision, and Sauron had decided to live. He would not fade away; they would find each other in time, but at that moment interacting with Sauron seemed more than he could bear.
It was then that Sauron appeared, a presence at the edge of the clearing, bright power buried under murk.
"So here is where you have gone," he said, all silky malice.
Celebrimbor eyed him. "You irritate me," he said. "I rather wanted to be alone."
"Yet you are not."
"Oh, yes! This is my friend the tree. We got to talking and I lost all track of time," said Celebrimbor, and it was not untrue.
"Did you now. You are aware that the trees in this land are hungry, that they wish to consume."
"Well, it was hungry at first; it thought I was food, but that was before I introduced myself."
There was a flare of power from Sauron; Celebrimbor stiffened in alarm.
"You did it again," Sauron hissed. "You tried to steal what is mine away from me. Celebrimbor, leaving me to get eaten by a tree is unacceptable."
"Are you serious?" Celebrimbor asked in disbelief. "Leaving aside how I am not yours and you yourself destroyed any claim you might have to me when you murdered me, I hardly asked a tree to try to eat me. And anyways, I'm fine."
"You have no right to take yourself away," said Sauron, as if Celebrimbor had not spoken, "and your lack of regard for your physical safety is intolerable."
"Are you… You know what, I'm not even going to bother to respond to either statement. Go away."
Sauron ignored him; Celebrimbor had not expected otherwise.
"It tried to eat you," Sauron said, and took a step toward the tree.
Celebrimbor quickly stepped between Sauron and the tree and considered what to say. He found yelling at Sauron cathartic and even enjoyable, but while he was more than willing to risk himself for such a pleasure, he would not put another at risk.
"It's like you, Sauron," he said, "consumed by what it wants and doesn't think it can have. Or didn't think it could have, till now. Like you it's in pain. I know you have no pity so I won't ask you to take pity. But aren't you interested in what it might do? You've heard of Ents; wouldn't you like to see how something might become one?"
Sauron tilted his head. "It might be interesting to see the evolution of the treekind, I suppose, perhaps for future use. The Entwives were useful to me."
Celebrimbor refrained from asking about the Entwives, a sinking feeling in his stomach at what Sauron might have done to them, a sinking feeling about what Sauron might do to the tree. He put it out of his mind for the moment, and turned to it, pressing his hands and forehead against its trunk.
He felt another flare of power from Sauron and turned his head around.
"I'll be fine," he said, "and if not, you're here."
I told you about the river, and the fish that swim in it, and how the water chimes as it moves over rock, he thought to the tree. And how rivers flow to their outlet and how you can find the sea and then find others of my kind. May I bring you to that river? There are fishes you might eat there.
I should like that, said the tree. I wish to see new things.
"Let us go then!" Celebrimbor said aloud. "It is not far and easy to find, just down the path."
He stepped back, going to Sauron's side, and watched as slowly as, with the crack of rock, the tree's roots lifted themselves free of the ground. The tree began to walk, faster than Celebrimbor would have thought. But the Ents could move at speed.
When Celebrimbor was a child, his grandfather would take him to the tidal pools on the Falas. There he had watched with delight to see octopuses creep out of the water to strike at crabs, or walk along the sand from pond to pond on eight arms. The tree, moving along with its many strong roots, was not unlike those octopuses and he bit his lip to stifle a grin. He watched, grasping Sauron's arm to keep him next to him and farther from the tree, and they followed behind it.
It was a short distance to the river and did not take long for them to arrive. The sand there, and the saturation of water within, was unsuited to the tree, which went instead to the rock and shallow soil closer to the waterfall, though it did extend one root to the water. Before Celebrimbor had not felt the tree's thirst, but he did then, and felt its satisfaction at quenching it.
He would have gone closer, but now it was Sauron's turn to grab his arm.
"It's still hungry," Sauron hissed.
Celebrimbor did not answer him, but said to the tree, "I told you there are fishes here too. They have the organic elements needed for life; I think the lack of them in the soil where you were was likely the chief cause of your hunger. Or perhaps not, for the sun is weakened in this land, but there will be more sunlight here too."
Sauron hmphed; Celebrimbor thought it likely that he was bothered by being ignored. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sauron move. When he turned to look, he had a fish in his hand, one of those flat breath-fish; Sauron threw it towards the tree.
"Food," Sauron said, then turned to Celebrimbor and smiled. "It's the same fish you named earlier. You won't have to worry about it being dissected."
Celebrimbor rolled his eyes, and looked away from him. There was some splashing in the water, the fish trying to escape from its doom; perhaps an animal reflex, or perhaps it felt panicked or terrified. Celebrimbor felt a brief moment of sadness for it, their linjive-tallathar, its kind lost to the rest of Arda and now it lost too, but such was the world, the eating and eaten.
Thank you, sang the tree.
Celebrimbor would have to leave the tree now, for Sauron was here again. Whatever Sauron's interest in evolution, Celebrimbor did fear for the tree's safety, given all the remarks Sauron had made about the tree's hunger. Sauron did not trust the tree and Celebrimbor did not trust Sauron. He sighed.
"I am afraid that I will need to go," Celebrimbor said. There was some panic at those words and he winced. Briefly he considered giving it Narya, but then glanced at Sauron.
"I am sorry, very sorry," he said aloud, but added, my companion is awake like us, but he is a dangerous creature and I would keep you safe.
"But remember that I told you that there are others like us? I promise, you will not be alone again. Others of my people are in this land, living by the shore. I will send them to you. It may be a long time or a short time — I could not tell you which, for I do not think you and I mark the passage of time in the same way — but my friends will come and speak to you. And I think that you yourself might awaken your fellows. Perhaps some are already awake and will hear you if you call to them. Or you can travel and speak and listen to hear if anyone listens back. If you do want to seek out my own people…"
The river likely led to the sea. While Celebrimbor put no more trust in the aerial surveys the Ashtandiri had done of Avathar than his perception of time, there had not appeared to be any endorheic basins, nor would he expect them given the geography.
"I think if you follow the river you will come to the sea. My own people are on the shore. If you follow it north, err, if you follow the sun, you will find them."
I would stay here, he added, by thought so that Sauron could not hear, but I do not trust my companion.
I understand, thought the tree, I perceive that he is dark, like a spider. There was no more splashing by its roots, so Celebrimbor presumed it had already eaten the limb-fish that Sauron had threw at it.
"I promise, you'll meet others and that you will not be alone," said Celebrimbor aloud, and hoped he was not lying.
When Sauron grabbed his arm to walk them away, Celebrimbor wrenched away and waved farewell to the tree. One of its branches moved tentatively, in what might be a return wave.
Till we meet again.
"Till we meet again," Celebrimbor agreed. "And may the sun shine upon us when we do. Till then, fare you well," and in his heart he felt the tree wish him well in return.
"Why did you come for me?" Celebrimbor asked after they had walked a mile or two down the river, towards wherever its outlet was.
"I sensed you were in danger," Sauron said, "and that you would need aid."
"I did not. I'm quite capable of seeing to my own survival, or making the reasoned decision that other things are more important than survival." Celebrimbor noticed Sauron's skeptical look and added, rather huffy, "Why does everyone think I have no survival instinct? I survived the First Age, and how many of my kin can say that? Not many."
"Be that as it may — and I rather think you protest too much — did you doubt I'd come?" Sauron's voice went silky. "You are cruel, Celebrimbor, but once precious and again in my possession. I certainly wouldn't let a tree eat you, for all that you spoke ill of what remains the most valuable thing ever made, my Ring admirable and dear above all."
The brief warmth from his encounter with the tree fled and Celebrimbor thought, and who do you think was dear to me? It was not that foul Ring of yours, and I too was bereft.
He looked at Sauron and they caught each other's gaze.
Celebrimbor turned and walked away. He did not care if Sauron followed him.
For several days they talked little. It was now Sauron who tried to draw Celebrimbor into conversation, but Celebrimbor rarely responded. After a week he let up, more out of boredom than anything, that and the desire to interrupt Sauron's ever-annoying monologues. If his anger did not pass it fell beneath the surface of his conscious mind; the two of them talked much as they had before.
"Sauron," said Celebrimbor one day, curious, "how did you come to be here? I thought that whatever pieces of you which survived would have lingered in Middle-earth till they dissolved away. But Aman? It is a rather unhealthy place, this Avathar, but it is in the land of the gods, held apart from Middle-earth, and guarded. How could you even come here, and why?"
His companion frowned. "When the Ring was unmade," he said slowly, "I did begin to dissolve. But a memory came to me at the last, before I was ended, of a time when I sent something to the West, and thought it to be a mercy. As a last desperate chance, what was left of me followed that memory, and found myself here, where you found me."
Sauron shrugged. "I don't even know if it was a memory. Perhaps it was an echo of that ancient decision, when I chose to bind myself to that which is the world, that I chose again to stay."
His eyes went sightless, or perhaps what he saw was something other than what stood around them. "I do not regret entering this Arda."
Celebrimbor eyed him, and did not speak. Yet after a moment, he drew Sauron into his mind, very carefully, and onto one path only, and kept the ones that led elsewhere walled off.
It was the last thing he knew. He had become nothing but a body in pain, a consciousness in torment, and the progression of time and the self he had not. But at the end Sauron had wretched open his mind enough for him to become once more aware of that outside of himself. A sharp tug, painful like all else was painful, and Celebrimbor would have wailed were his tattered vocal cords still capable of such a noise; he came back to himself and he knew, and he knew that it was now done. Kill me, was the thought in his shattered mind.
"Traitor," said Sauron, soft in his ear; Celebrimbor understood the word. He had been given such strength as to bring his eyes to focus on him, Sauron's face a breath away from his own, compelled in such a way that he could not look away: everything was dark but Sauron, fair and bright.
"Traitor," said Sauron. "Thief. I have been kinder to thee than thou deserv'st, and I shall give thee mercy at the end. For the sake of that which I have made with our art and for the friendship that thou betrayedst, I shall not trap thee in this decaying body, nor bind thee as a ghost to my will; I shall answer thy prayers to me thy god and kill thee. Go now into death, and remain who thou art, and in Mandos weep for all eternity for thy betrayal."
Celebrimbor felt a hand on his cheek and sank into it. He could not speak and had nothing to say.
"Betrayer," Sauron whispered against his lips. He let Celebrimbor close his eyes and stepped back.
Then there was some sharp force pushing its way into his chest, and another push, and another, and then sudden disconnected darkness, a call from the West and a Will pushing him forth into another prison, and it still hurt.
Sauron's eyes went wide and pained.
"Tyelpe," he said. "Does it still hurt?"
Like a broken bone, Celebrimbor thought, healed crooked but usable.
"At times. Not physically."
"I remember why I killed you. I was so angry, and betrayed: you had stolen the Rings that were mine, and yourself too. Your death was of your own doing; you chose it by your acts. And yet… seeing… I have remembered how precious you were. Why did you force me to kill you? Or, perhaps I might have thought of other ways to persuade you to give up what it was that you stole from me, and kept you alive."
Celebrimbor's lips curled in scorn. "What other ways? Isolation is torture too, and mind control worse, had you managed that. And do you think I wouldn't have opposed you, hated you, had you kept me completely unharmed and still made a wreck of Eriador? How you destroy everything you touch! Tar-Tussauron túruna saucarya! Samicha thauza, acarnachas lithaukazha!"
Sauron sneered back. "How ungrateful you are. It is by my grace that you stand here now, my grace that sent you to the west. That it turned out to be of use to me as well is of no matter: the mercy I granted you remains undeserved and you remain in my debt."
Celebrimbor closed his eyes briefly. Compared to the other fates Sauron could have forced upon him, homeless half-life or a spirit enslaved to Sauron's will… even when Sauron killed him he had not sought Celebrimbor's total destruction. A small mercy, if it could be called that.
"If I do owe such a debt to you — and I do not, considering that I only came to the West because you killed me — it is paid. You followed me because you knew that you sent me here in hope of..."
He let out a shuddering sigh, some pain in his chest. Sauron, what am I to do? he thought, what am I to think, knowing you still remembered me, even at the end, even after the end, that it was me you followed. Or perhaps it was nothing more than Sauron's instinct for survival.
"In hope of me remaining who I am," he said. "Just as a part of you hoped to live, fearing death as you do, and so followed. If anything, you owe me a debt."
"You are wrong of course," said Sauron, his voice matter of fact and with no anger, though it made Celebrimbor angry, but then he sighed. "Oh Celebrimbor, what am I to do with you? I won't kill you again: you were once my possession and though you stole yourself away you remain mine, and your death was unpleasant for me. But how frustrating you are, how frustrating your refusal to see what is!"
Celebrimbor pressed his fingers to his temples to ward off his own frustration. "This is pointless," he said. "How infuriating you can be!"
Sauron was said something in reply but Celebrimbor did not bother listening to it. He interrupted him, "You do know that it's your own fault that you lost things you valued. You killed me. Even… you do know that if you had not made the Ring you would not have lost it; would your life not have been better?"
You would suggest!" Sauron cried.
Celebrimbor snorted. "Yes I would. It didn't work out for you, did it. Look at where, what, you are now."
Sauron froze for a moment, then wheeled on Celebrimbor. "I remember you saying that my plans would fail; I suppose time has proved you right. You have no gift of Sight: tell me how you knew that."
Celebrimbor smiled at him, anger at once giving way to sudden hope. "You can be so stupid at times. Sauron, you once told me how you made the One. I know what the Ring was and how it was made and what it was made of — that is how I knew that you would fail, suffer defeat and near destruction."
Some flame sprang to life in Sauron's eyes. "It was perfect! How dare you say it was destruction!"
Celebrimbor looked at him, unmoved. "That's not what I said."
But Sauron perhaps did not hear. "But even now I still can't remember everything. I loved it; it was admirable, dearer than everything, and I don't know how it was created."
When he looked at Celebrimbor his presence filled with some wild loss and confusion. "It was perfect," he said again. "How can I not remember everything about it?"
Celebrimbor's moods had been mercurial since they had re-met; now he found himself stricken and pained and instinctively moved to touch Sauron's cheek.
"It was beautiful," he said, "but it was foul too. Sauron, listen. When you made the Ring you made its loss."
Sauron hissed at that, and Celebrimbor stepped back quickly but continued.
"You bound your own being it in, and into it you poured your lust for dominion, and your malice and cruelty; the only thing good of you that you gave to it was your beauty. When you forged that Ring, you made a choice and that choice was to make yourself into someone whose only goal was to control everything and not care about anyone. You made yourself into someone whom all goodly people must fight, and — listen, Sauron — you gave them the means to destroy you. The Ring was power but also weakness, a small thing and easily stolen. You know full well that the destruction of the Ring tore you apart.
"Do you remember how much I wept when you were tormenting me? At times it was because I thought of what I knew would happen to you. I saw that Ring, knew what it was made of and knew the only end. Such nigh unbearable sorrow you caused me for…"
He paused. Sauron said nothing so he went on, and took great care to make his voice steady.
"For I loved you, and it hurt that I knew your inevitable doom, and it hurt to see what you had done to yourself. You threw away all that was good in pursuit of power that would in the end become powerlessness."
"You loved me," Sauron repeated back, seemingly contemplative. "You had not said so before. But of course you did. The Ring was mine and me, and it above all else it was worthy of love and coveting. Now you begin to make sense."
"You're not listening," Celebrimbor said raggedly and turned his head away. His throat was too choked to speak: how could you, how could you? But he felt a hand on his shoulder; he flinched and did not try to stop Sauron from turning him back.
Sauron studied him. "The Ring is gone; its loss incalculable and it can never be recovered. But something of it remains in me." Sauron smiled then. "You belonged to me once too. You made me dispose of you after your betrayal, but if you stole yourself away you have returned. An incomplete repentance, but for now it will suffice."
Celebrimbor felt old and impossibly weary. "Is that truly what you've gained from this conversation? Do you at least realize that forging the Ring started the chain of events that led you to become a wreck of a thing?"
"But was it inevitable? Had you given me what you stole, given me yourself and the Three, I might have won. But… I should have protected the Ring better. I admit I made tactical mistakes in thinking it would always be with me, or be easier to recover than it was. This I now perceive."
Celebrimbor did not bother to reply. It's a start, I suppose, he thought. He's made no attempt to torture or kill me, he was distressed to see my death, and he admitted that he made mistakes over the Ring. It could be worse. And yet he was so very tired.
"Sauron," he said, "I'm exhausted and wish to speak no more. Replay the events of your past, if you will, ponder what would have been if you had made different decisions, or obsess over the Ring. I care not, but whatever you do, do it in silence."
"Is rest what you wish? Are you up for retracing our steps?" said Sauron, not silent. "There was that beach with soft ferns half a mile back; it might be comfortable for you to sleep there."
Celebrimbor looked at him skeptically.
"You incarnates have bothersome physical requirements," said Sauron, a sentiment Celebrimbor had heard innumerable times; another time it might have made him smile. "But you have them all the same, and you said yourself that you are tired, and thus require rest. See, Tyelpe, I do take care of my things."
"Oh, Morgoth have mercy," Celebrimbor said, wishing he had something to throw at Sauron. "Do you ever listen to yourself? Yes, let's go back to that beach. I would like to sleep: it means I won't have to listen to you."
They walked slowly, Celebrimbor plodding along. Sauron did not push him to go faster, for it had grown dark enough that even an Elda would have trouble seeing and it would be troublesome if Celebrimbor twisted an ankle. It still took only a short time to arrive at the place he had suggested, where the shore widened to a broad beach. There were small spiders building webs in the ferns around them that gave off a pale glow, blue and indigo, radiating out from the spiders, growing diffuse like a thin cloud. It was beautiful, the way they twinkled, the way the light moved in undulating patterns, the dewdrops on their webs sparkling like small diamonds. Sauron discouraged the spiders from coming any closer to Celebrimbor or himself, but he did not discourage their presence, for they were the only source of light aside from Celebrimbor's own faint gleam: the sky was moonless and starless and oppressively black, with no light in it, not even airglow.
The elf himself dropped his packs and settled down in the soft ferns, wrapping one of his coats about him. Sauron returned to watching the spiders' luminescence till he heard soft noises coming from Celebrimbor. It seemed that he was crying quietly. It was unpleasant to hear. Sauron sat, not moving at all.
After a time Celebrimbor breathed out a sigh and turned to lay on his back.
"Are you well?" Sauron ventured to say.
Celebrimbor turned his face towards him. "Why do you ask?" he said, voice rough.
Sauron was not sure. He remained silent.
Celebrimbor looked back at him. "I don't know," he said eventually.
It was not an adequate response but Sauron doubted he would elicit any better ones; Celebrimbor was likely not sure himself: incarnates could be so very frustrating to deal with.
"What do you want?" he said, caught by a sudden desire to give it to him, to soothe him in some way.
"I don't know that either," said Celebrimbor dully. "Once I wanted so much, the world and everything in it and everything outside of it. And now? I don't know."
He turned his head back to the starless black sky and added in a contemplative voice, "It has been a very long time since I was happy."
Sauron had nothing but silence to offer him.
Celebrimbor slept, after a time, and Sauron continued to watch.
Author's Notes:
The line Celebrimbor sings is from the Lay of Leithian.
In Nature of Middle-earth, there is a note about how things invented by other people were later attributed, incorrectly, to Feanor.
Fangorn is Treebeard. (The forest was named after him.)
The tree is an Archaeopteris. The fish Sauron examines is an Acanthostega.
Tolkien's conlangs:
Ambar - the planet. Arda refers to the entire solar system. This is a technical distinction; Arda in casual speech can be used to refer to the planet too.
Tyeperinquar, Tyelpe, Tyelpinkenya - various versions of Celebrimbor's name in Quenya. Tyelperinquar is the full version, Tyelpe is a nickname, and Tyelpinkenya is Sauron being a creep: it literally means my-little-Tyelpe (I'm taking -inke to be an affectionate and/or condescending way to form a nickname).
Amanyar - the inhabitants of Aman who were born there. Amanyarin is the adjective. Arda Hastaina - Arda Marred, Arda after the Fall.
Amuntesáne - 'dawn-pine.' An Archaeopteris tree. The plural is amuntesáni.
Tar-Tussauron túruna saucarya - Lordly Master-of-Evil mastered by (his own) evil-doing. Parallel to Túrin Turambar túrun' ambartanen, though the former doesn't sound as good. Theoretically in Quenya since the two of them are speaking Sindarin, but actually in Quenya because this chapter is nothing else if not self-indulgent conlanging.
Both Quenya and Sindarin have a formal/informal distinction in the second person pronouns. To my knowledge, Tolkien never addresses the semantics behind deciding whether to address someone with the formal or informal "you", however since he refers to the Sindarin 2nd person formal as the "reverential" pronoun, I've taken that to mean that the Sindarin 2nd person informal is widely used. Quenya, otoh, literally has an endearment tyenya, meaning "my thou" which is used only for family, close friends, and lovers, so I'm going with the supposition that the Quenya 2nd person formal is the usual mode of address and the informal 2nd person is reserved only for people with whom the speaker has an intimate relationship (so someone might address the same person with the informal you in Sindarin but the formal you in Quenya).
My conlang. More on it, including notes on grammar, pronunciation, and fuller explanations of the translations is on my tumblr (it, uh, got a bit long). Hopefully everything comes across in the chapter itself; I did my best.
Thauzan - Sauron. Standard Quendya is Thauzon, Sauron in Exilic Quenya (which Celebrimbor speaks; he does not use the thorn.)
Tauzhalamba - the name of the language.
Chalharikker - Celebrimbor
Shina 'lhanyava - "this elf of mine"
Ai Chalhikkanyava in ivaranda 'mmalha - "oh my little Tyelpe the dearest betrayer."
Samicha thauza - "you (informal) are terrible (and were and always will be terrible)."
Nin shirava nas ringa - "the river's water is cold"
Samin tama - "I am a smith"
Samin kachaima - "I am curious"
Saminyas re - "I have a body"
Hazhanyalha nissa shina happar - "I'm wearing these clothes"
Hazhanyas nissa vana - "I'm wearing a fana," which is the word used to describe the bodies the naturally non-corporeal Ainur assume.
Van vena - "I'm not blond(e)"
Launyas hazha vindassa malha - "I don't have golden hair."
Asaumanyas re - "I did have a body (implied: and I don't have one now)"
Saminyas shina 'lha - "I own this elf" (inalienable, the ownership of said elf is not temporary)
samin vari, (malha, atar) - "I am a husband (friend, father)." Isas unyan vari - "I have a husband." Lit. It exists/is located with-me husband.
Samin ivaranda, nan ivaranda - "I am a traitor" in both sentences, but the first is saying "I am by nature a traitor" and the second "I am a traitor but it's incidental and not part of my fundamental nature."
Samicha thauza, acarnachas lithaukazha - "you are terrible (by nature and have and always will be terrible), you have done great evil."
