Chapter 15: A Prince Among Men (Angharad)

(~***~)

The Emperor looked down at his son challenging him and felt a tidal wave of emotions crash over him, although his self-discipline was so ingrained that not a muscle moved in his face. Had he looked so naïve – so foolish – in these past decades when he had questioned his father's iron fist over the court? To see his son as he thought he must have once appeared filled him with hurt and shame, which were quickly overshadowed by the protective energies of anger and disgust.

He, too, had once believed in a more compassionate ruler looking out over the Empire of his children. He had relished the day when he would rule with greater valor than his father, commanding the respect of his nobles and servants not with fear, but with admiration. But he had learned. Oh, had he learned. The nobles of this kingdom did not care for gallantry. No, each house was for its own glory, wealth, and power. The Emperor needed their cooperation in order to keep the country running, but they would not follow the crown simply for its righteousness. Only fear and favor could control the cunning wolves that attended his court every day in the finest silks and gold ornaments money could buy, he thought.

The Emperor decided he would not make the same mistake his father had by ignoring or indulging such challenges from the Crown Prince. His father's neglect had only left him unprepared for his role. In the first years of his reign, he had quickly learned that his high mindedness had only made him a laughingstock among courtiers who considered him easy to manipulate. He would do better by his son. Although it would pain the boy, it was better to learn the truth about his role now than to confront it at the very moment when he should be making a strong first impression as a new ruler.

The Emperor looked down at his son with a stone face and said, "If you're so knowledgeable about the proper way to conduct this matter, then I give it to your care, heir of the Middle Kingdom. Consider carefully how your performance reflects upon you, son of mine. Will your future subjects respect a tender heart at the center of this dynasty that gives away its wealth and power, do you think? Should I?"

The Emperor handed his manservant the keys to the bonds of all the creatures in the entire menagerie. The eunuch presented them to the Crown Prince, who accepted stiffly. He was not fooled that he had true freedom to let these people go. This was a challenge of his strength – before his father, his family, and the entire court. To fail would surely bring shame and punishment upon him now and far into the future. Still, Yijun could not bring himself to look at the elf girl now that he was her captor.

The careful stillness of the throne room was suddenly interrupted by the only person who could truly get away with such a thing. The Emperor's tiny niece, the princess known affectionately to everyone as Awu, piped up from her place on the dais. Everyone indulged Awu, especially the emperor. She was very young, she was adorable and precocious in an entirely nonthreatening manner. She had quickly grown into the role of being the family ice breaker. She loved it – she usually got her way.

"Uncle I want to play with the Princess!" she said. The royal family let a careful, relieved chuckle pass through them like a breeze.

"Then ask your cousin the Crown Prince to bring you to play with her, sweet Awu. The Princess Anhe is his ward," the Emperor insisted. He looked at Yijun purposefully. The Prince understood that he was to broker this exchange as requested and gave a formal bow of acknowledgement.

"Take them away," the Emperor said with a calculated air of absentmindedness. Let everyone see how unbothered he was by the Prince's challenge, by keeping royal and heavenly prisoners, by indulging a princess in her youth. At the end of this day, he felt that it had ultimately strengthened his hand, and he was moderately pleased.

(~***~)

The servants quickly removed the menagerie residents from the throne room. The dance instructor, the dwarf, the translator, and everyone else who had feared any unwanted personal attention were deeply relieved that the Crown Prince's outburst had taken the focus away from their performance.

"What just happened?" Angharad whispered to Xiaoqing, Ginnar leaning in close so he could hear as well. "The Emperor gave the boy the keys – the keys to our bonds, right? He was speaking for us, will he let us go now?"

Xiaoqing let out a muffled, dark laugh. "The Crown Prince does indeed hold the keys to our freedom now, but he won't let us go. No, that was a lesson from an Emperor to his heir that had nothing to do with us. I wouldn't pin your hopes on the pity of the Prince now. Whatever he spoke of before he was handed those keys, he'll quickly see he cannot follow his whims without suffering consequences himself. We must all please the boy-king now. He holds our futures in his hands."

Angharad and Ginnar looked at each other in confusion. They thought the boy seemed like he could be an ally. Angharad determined to talk it over with her friend in the private darkness of their shelter later. The Prince seemed barely out of childhood himself. Surely, surely they could get through to him if they tried?

(~***~)

While the children waited for the summons to entertain the infant princess Awu, their minders set them back into their routine. They had received no orders that the children were to cease lessons. Only that Anhe was to be treated with the respect due to a foreign dignitary. The children were assigned the kind of nanny a princess would have, which they did not end up appreciating. The nanny was with them at all times, even sleeping on a pallet in their shelter with them. She would scold them if they talked in Sindarin too much, although they continued to do so in whispers when she slept. The relief of free play they had enjoyed after their lessons was impeded by their new minder's constant fussing over them getting hurt or dirty. (It did remind Angharad of her mother a little, though, which just made her feel homesick.)

Not three days after the surprise performances, Ginnar was in the dwarf workshop when its human guards did something unusual and careless: they left the dwarfs to themselves while they wandered off to find some food. The adult dwarfs sprang into action. Ginnar watched with awe as they moved furniture out of the way and opened a panel at the bottom of a wall to reveal a tunnel. One of the smaller dwarfs was handed a large container of clanking metal items and disappeared into the cramped hole. Ginnar's teacher sized him up.

"Child, do you want to help us defy the villain who insults us and keeps us against our will?" the teacher asked carefully. He was pretty certain he could trust the boy, or he would not have asked. As expected, Ginnar agreed enthusiastically.

"We cannot get free because of these disgusting chains, but the dwarfs in the weapons workshop have been sneaking some to us on the sly. We supply them to a group of rebels against the Imperial scourge that plagues this nation. Will you bring one of the packages down for us?" the older dwarf asked.

Ginnar looked at the hole. It was true, it was tight for an adult dwarf. It looked like they didn't want to make it larger because it would be harder to hide. But he would fit fine. He was more than happy to help rebels who defied the Emperor.

"Yes!" Ginnar agreed to the approval of all the older dwarfs.

"Another load coming down," one of them whispered down the passage to the first courier. They gave another container to Ginnar. He eased himself into the dark tunnel. He pushed the container in front of him and crawled until light started to filter in again. He emerged into a murky root cellar where the first dwarf was waiting for him. As soon as the child arrived, the older dwarf took his package and stowed it behind a stack of barrels. To the side of the barrels on the wall someone had carved a symbol of a knife with two wings. Ginnar thought he'd seen the symbol somewhere before…

"Come on," the older dwarf prompted the gaping youngster. "The guards will not stay away long. We have to go back."

"What is that place? How will the rebels get the weapons?" Ginnar asked into the darkness at the dwarf ahead of him.

"The rebels come and check every week or two to see if we have left them anything," the leading dwarf explained. "Now hush. We have to get out and get back to work before they see."

(~***~)

Late that night, whispering under the snores of their sleeping nanny, Ginnar told Angharad about the passageway and the rebels. When he described the symbol on the wall Angharad looked startled.

"Not like the pin our translator wears?" she asked in astonishment. Ginnar immediately knew that is where he'd seen the symbol.

"Yes, exactly like that! Do you think he's a secret rebel?" Ginnar asked in excitement.

"Shhhh," Angharad reminded him. The nanny could not speak Sindarin, but still. This needed to be kept secret.

"Maybe he is… if we could get our bonds off and get over to your workshop maybe we could sneak out and join them. We could ask the translator to give them a message. But I do not know how we would get these off," Angharad mused, picking at her chains.

"Aye," Ginnar agreed. "And it would not be easy to get to the workshop. It is across the busiest courtyard in the whole palace."

"We should not say anything until we have a real plan," Angharad told Ginnar. Ginnar thought maybe the translator could help them come up with a plan, but as they could not agree they decided to stay silent for now.

Angharad skipped reverie entirely that evening, instead thinking hard about how they could use their new information.

(~***~)

The next day, the call finally came. Angharad was dressed up like a fancy doll, much to her chagrin. Ginnar, who once again got away with something much more comfortable, tried not to gloat where she could see him.

For the first time since their arrival, the children were taken outside of the garden – a maneuver that required some fiddling with their restraints near the gate that they were not allowed to watch. A pair of eunuchs, their nanny, and an unfamiliar translator accompanied them across the grand courtyard of the Emperor's palace.

(Ginnar shot Angharad a meaningful look to the left of the courtyard, indicating that the workshop was that way. She could see what he meant. Even at nighttime, she had no idea how they could get over there undetected.)

In the Prince's apartments, Angharad and Ginnar found the Prince Yijun attended by no less than four servants and eunuchs, his mother, his aunt, and his aunt's daughter, the Princess Awu. The Prince's decision to bring them into the palace was the most rebellion he dared against his father's warnings about the menagerie residents – something Yijun had come up with to show his displeasure without enough aggression to bring a hailstorm of wrath down on him. Still, once he had decreed that Awu's requested playtime with elf princess would take part in his quarters, the list of those that would be required to attend had grown substantially.

When his guests arrived, the Prince made a show of ignoring them. He worked on his calligraphy instead. He tried not to sneak peeks over his desk at them. He didn't really want to look them in the eyes.

Awu had no such reservations. "Hi! Princess!" she chortled when Angharad arrived. "I'm a princess, too," the little girl informed the elf. "Let's play court ladies."

Angharad was puzzled from the moment their interaction began. The tiny girl had the presence of a fully grown queen, she was that authoritative. Awu sat the elf down at a fancy little table with fancy little teacups and snacks. She demanded that Ginnar join the 'other servants' to wait on them.

"He's not my servant, he's my friend," Angharad told her in passable Eastron. (Four hours of lessons a day and full immersion were catching them up fast.)

Princess Awu laughed and laughed at that. "Of course he's your servant. Don't be silly, princess of heaven." Angharad shot Ginnar a confused and apologetic look over the little girl's head. He was offended, but not stupid enough to make a fuss in this situation. He contented himself with being as invisible as possible so he could look around the room and admire the craftsmanship displayed in every nook and cranny he could see.

Awu was playing some sort of game that involved tea, giving orders, fluttering a fan, and then, apparently, small talk.

"I'm four years old, Princess Anhe," Awu informed the elf loftily. "How old are you?"

"Oh, thank you," Angharad tried as the little girl poured her yet more tea. She was so small she could not manage it without spilling a little, but no one was going to comment about it. "I'm twenty-six," the elf replied honestly.

The little girl looked at her like she was stupid. She turned to the translator. "She doesn't understand right. Ask her how old she is."

The translator asked Angharad in Westron and Angharad repeated her answer. She was twenty-six. She had had a begetting day since the accident at this point, she was almost certain. The translator relayed the repeat answer nervously.

The little girl slammed her hand on the table and shouted, "You're not twenty-six, liar! You can't be more than ten!" Awu was near tears now. Her mother swept in to bring the child for an afternoon rest, chiding her for losing her temper and her manners.

"Don't let her lie, mama," the little princess could be heard crying as she was carted away.

Angharad sat awkwardly at the play table, hoping she wasn't going to be in trouble for telling the truth. Instead, she noticed that the Prince had stopped what he was doing and was looking at her curiously.

"Are you really twenty-six?" he asked her. Angharad nodded. "And how old will you be when you are fully grown?" he asked thoughtfully.

"We're fifty when our bodies are done growing, but we don't come of age until we're a hundred," Angharad explained in a mix of her own Eastron and words supplied by the translator.

The Prince looked thoughtful. He took a few more strokes with his ink brush as he composed his face.

"And how long will you live?" he asked. He thought it might not be a polite question, but he reminded himself he was in charge here. He could ask what he liked.

"Forever," the elf told the astonished audience. "Until the world is over."

The Prince looked at her with awe that he struggled to keep off his features. "How old is your grandfather the king?"

"Um… let's see… about eight thousand?" Angharad answered. She thought she had that right. The dates and ages in Middle Earth confused her still sometimes. Elrond had taught her but, you know, it had been nice outside.

The Prince continued brushing out a few characters as he gathered his thoughts. This problem of the girl being found by her family could very well be one that he inherited, he realized. Her family could look for her indefinitely. What would he say to an angry spirit king that arrived to find his granddaughter held prisoner?

Yijun gestured to a eunuch, trying to exude an air of authority. "Clear away those playthings. We'll dine together," he gestured to the elf and to her companion the young dwarf. If she called him a friend, then the Prince decided he would include the boy out of deference to her station.

Yijun, his mother, Angharad, and Ginnar did as the Prince said: they sat down together a table in his apartments meant for entertaining and ate. The Prince asked his guests about their origins. The more he heard from them, the more the need to keep them captive weighed on him. Anhe and Ginnar were only children who wanted to return to their parents. They reminded him of Awu, and of himself. But he steeled himself against the desire to grab their keys then and there and set them free; to promise to help them get home at the Empire's expense.

As the Prince was asking Ginnar about his interest in jade and turquoise, Angharad let her mind wander. Some movement and sound out the window caught her attention. She craned her neck a little to look before she could remember not to do so.

"Don't bother yourself with that," the Prince told her when she glanced out the window. "They're just replacing tiles on the roof. It happens all the time."

Angharad returned her attention to the compulsory conversation they were having. She could see little twitches through the boy Prince's composure as she and Ginnar told him about their families, but he made no move to help them. Disappointing, she thought. He looked only a little older than them, she had really hoped he might be more sympathetic.

Finally, they were released to go back to their shelter in the garden. The Prince had ordered that they join him for tea and conversation every week now – ostensibly to play with Awu, but he seemed genuinely curious about them as well. Angharad thought he seemed like he had potential. She would keep trying to get through to him.

On the way through the courtyard back to the garden, Angharad looked up at the roof where she had heard the noises. Sure enough, she could see men crab-crawling across the curved roof, replacing the ceramic tiles. If even humans did not need guide ropes on that surface, she thought she could definitely walk on it. She wondered if Ginnar could as well. An idea was starting to form in her head…

(~***~)

That night Angharad waited for their nanny to fall asleep, eager to tell Ginnar about her idea about the roof. It could bring them one step closer to a real escape plan. Even better if they could get the Prince on their side.

But as the woman's breathing started to get heavier, Angharad began to feel something that had been missing from her fёa for so many months now that she no longer lingered on its absence. As the song of her parents' love for her whispered to her in the darkness, the young girl could feel tears run down her face. Suddenly she wasn't so sure that they should go. This place was not pleasant, but it was stable. They were safe, fed, and in a single location where they could be found. She decided not to share her idea about the roof with him for now, though she felt guilty keeping a secret from her friend.

"Ginnar," she said quietly when the woman was asleep. "My parents are here in Middle Earth. I can feel them again. Maybe we do not need to do anything. We can just wait, and they will come save us. I know my ada would not leave you here. You will see."

"Really?" Ginnar asked with excitement. "How can you tell?" The children whispered to each other in the darkness, suddenly full of hope as they imagined Angharad's parents coming to free them.

(~***~)

But the very next week Angharad's hopeful fantasies about being rescued by her parents turned into horror and a rage against the Emperor that burned so hot she felt that she might erupt into flames. Crossing the courtyard for their weekly audience with the Prince, she overheard a conversation that she was never meant to hear. It seemed the Emperor's army were not aware of how much Eastron she understood now, nor how good her hearing was.

"It's the girl with the yellow hair," an officer said to one of his soldiers. "Send word around. If adults that look the same come looking for her, we're to detain them. The Emperor wants a full set for his little collection."

Angharad walked the rest of the way in stunned silence. She went through the motions of playing with Awu in a state of dissociation. Both Ginnar and the Prince noticed something was off with the elf, but neither was in a good place to inquire about her wellbeing at this moment.

Perhaps it was because she was in such a state that she took the risk she took next. When Awu's mother carted her away after another fit, the girl had wriggled free and run away screaming bloody murder. The Prince had ordered Angharad and Ginnar to stay where they were, then summoned his servants out into the hallway with him to chase down the naughty princess.

Suddenly the elf and the dwarf were alone in the Prince's apartment. As soon as everyone was gone, Angharad sprung up and began searching for the keys. She had seen their escort hand something to the Prince during both visits that he had then tucked away in his desk. That had to be their path to freedom.

"What are you doing?" Ginnar hissed in alarm. "They will be right back!"

"We have to get out of here, Ginnar. I was wrong about my parents saving us," Angharad replied, forcing herself to speak quietly although she felt like screaming and crying like the four-year-old that had just left them.

Ginnar didn't have another chance to try to talk sense to her. The Prince appeared in the doorway alone. His mother and the servants were still running after Awu, who was taking special pleasure in evading the grownups.

"What are you doing?" Yijun asked Angharad dangerously when he caught her rifling through his desk. Her rage fueling both desperation and defiance, Angharad burst out with the truth before she could counsel herself otherwise.

"Do you know that your father plans to lure my parents here and trap them in his garden, too? My father was a crown prince, like you. Can you imagine being so insulted, Prince?" she said as hot tears started to spill down her face. "Give me the keys to our freedom so we can escape. I know you want to, you said so yourself to your father. Are you a coward?"

Prince Yijun was taken aback. The elf's forwardness was not the way of his people; he had little experience being confronted so forcefully. In the hallway he could hear the sounds of someone catching Awu. His mother and the servants would be returning soon. Obviously, he should punish his captive for both her words and actions… But the Prince's own outrage burned all the hotter as he looked into the eyes of Anhe – the princess, his peer – in a state of fury as she imagined her parents, celestial royals, being caught like animals in a trap, with her as the bait.

The Prince felt a fierce compassion grip him and he knew it to be good. His religious Teacher, who had had fostered his interest in learning and growth for years, had told him that moments like this would come - that compassion gave a fiercer courage to those who could wield it than any strength born of fear. As footsteps began to move towards them again, he made up his mind. The Prince strode to his desk, opened a box with a small key around his neck, and took out the ring of menagerie keys.

"Get out of here as quickly as you safely can," he told the astonished elf. She had not really expected that to work. In her mind she thanked Elbereth profusely as the Prince prepared to do the bravest thing he had ever done. "Leave my kingdom and go home to your heaven where you belong."

"The green snake, too," Angharad begged him, following an intuition that itched at her brain.

"The demon? She won't help you," the Prince said in surprise as he wrestled the keys for Angharad and Ginnar off their ring.

"I know," she replied, but did not change her request. There was no time to think it over. The Prince acquiesced, releasing a prayer to his ancestors that his hasty actions would not cause harm.

"Sit back down," the Prince commanded Anhe. Thinking quickly, Anhe handed the keys to Ginnar. His clothes were simpler, and the nanny fussed over him less. If one of them could hide their prize, it was him. Ginnar hid the keys hurriedly and Angharad sat back down, picking up a teacup. All three of their hearts pounded through the rest of the afternoon tea charade. Angharad half expected the Prince to change his mind and pounce on them at any minute, but he held steady. At the end of the hour, he let them go as though nothing had happened.

(In the end, the Prince's refusal to explain himself, the courage everyone knew it had taken to do what they suspected he had done, and the unwavering bravery with which he accepted his punishment made a greater impression than any act of an oppressor ever could. He would become a child Emperor not two years later, ruling with a skillful regent as his guide as he grew into a man. The liberation of the menagerie residents was one of his first acts as Emperor. Zhu Yijun and his regent went into the period of his ruling with lofty goals for improving their nation. And for a while, they did.)

(~***~)

Footnotes:

The pet name "Awu" of the little princess is from the The Rebel Princess/Monarch Industry/Shangyang Fu (TV, China, 2021).

Some inspiration for a story line starting in this chapter comes from House of Flying Daggers (film, 2004)