Content Warning: This chapter contains imagery and themes that may be upsetting to some readers.
Aiër Chapter 29 Part 1
There was a bright room full of light, with high, vaulted ceilings atop great stone pillars. The floors and walls were built of smooth white stone that was luminous beneath the tall, wide windows and the rays of sunshine that poured in from beyond them. Set upon pedestals encircling the chamber were many statues of ancient kings carved from the same white stone, and below their crowns and helms, their polished eyes were all turned toward the center of the hall, where there stood a table with several people crowded around it.
"There's no other way in."
Aragorn was bent over an array of maps and charts strewn before him, his hands braced over the edge of the table.
On either side of him stood Legolas and Gandalf, and, across, Gimli with Éomer.
"Then we must find a new way," Legolas said harshly. His face was as stony as the watching statues, his voice as hard and cold, but his eyes flashed with kindled fury.
Éomer and Gimli seemed to trade a glance.
"What do you suggest?" Aragorn asked, as though in frustration and exhaustion—as though they had been talking in circles for many countless hours. He dragged his hand over his face. "If there were any other answer—"
"This is not an answer," Legolas interrupted. His gaze was still fixed upon the maps.
"It is the only choice left to us," Aragorn argued.
"Then you forsake her," said Legolas coldly. His hands were balled into fists.
Aragorn suddenly straightened and fixed him with a look of indignant disbelief.
"Forsake her?" he echoed, gesturing pointedly at the maps before them. "I would march upon the Black Gate itself—"
Finally lifting his gaze, Legolas abruptly turned, and his countenance was dark and thunderous.
"That is not enough!" he exploded, glaring at Aragorn as though with contempt and blame.
Gimli hastened forth around the table.
"Laddie—" he said, laying his hand upon his friend's arm, but Legolas shook it off and took a step closer to Aragorn.
"You think he would hand her over?" he hissed. His brow was creased as though in agony. He gestured, as well, throwing out his arm to point not at the table and maps as Aragorn had, but toward one of the windows, where beyond the clean sunlight there could be seen a black range of mountains beneath clouds like a storm. "You think he will deliver her into our keeping, alive and unharmed, if we march with some few soldiers to his door and demand her safe return? Not with all the amassed strength of my people and yours could we hope to secure her release, and much less strength do we have!"
Aragorn met his furious regard and glared levelly back at him, lifting his chin.
"There is no alternative. Either we ride for battle or we do nothing," he said.
Legolas seemed to tremble with an anger he struggled to quell.
"Indeed, we may as well do nothing," he argued darkly. "If we ride openly for Mordor and declare war before the Enemy's gate, we will ensure nothing but our deaths and her doom, for her fate would be sealed."
Aragorn took a step forward, as he had.
"I know what you intend," he said. "If it could be done—"
"Do not tell me what can and cannot be done!" Legolas snarled.
Aragorn grasped both his shoulders and stared into his face.
"Legolas, you must keep your wits," he commanded sharply. "If there is any hope for her, we must not act rashly—"
But these words seemed to strike a chord of terror and temper in Legolas as steel upon a flint, and he looked for an instant as though he would seize Aragorn by the front of his clothes.
"Rashly?" he seethed. "Have you no idea what he could be doing to her? Every moment we waste in caution and doubt is another moment she spends in torment!"
Aragorn's tolerance seemed to waver.
"You think I don't know—?"
Then, despite the hands held upon his shoulders, Legolas stepped forward again so that he and Aragorn stood eye to eye, but now when he spoke his voice was low and fierce, and was somehow more terrible than his shouts.
"When she believed you to be in danger, she screamed and wept and begged leave to go to your aid," he said. "For love of you, she would have braved alone all the armies of Isengard to save your life. Now you would not do the same—"
"I would die for her!" Aragorn cut across him, his voice echoing beneath the tall ceilings. He seemed to have been moved past patience to anger at last. "If I believed there was any hope of passing unseen beneath the Shadow and rescuing her from rack and ruin, I would do it. I would go with you even into the dungeons of Barad-dûr—into the very depths of the Black Tower. I would offer myself to Sauron in her place and submit to him in torture and death if it would mean her release, but it would not."
For a moment they both stood in outrage and accusation, their chests rising and falling, but then Aragorn frowned, and his eyes softened, and his hands tightened upon Legolas's shoulders.
"Do you forget that I love her, as you do?" he asked with compassion and anguish. "Do you think I have no share in your terror? I am not your enemy in this."
Legolas clenched his jaw and glanced away, his face shaded with obvious turmoil and despair.
"Sauron will not readily release a prisoner so long sought and so dearly bought," he said flatly, even as he reached up to grasp Aragorn's arm. His entire body appeared rigid, tense with strain and agitation. "And we have not a fraction of the number needed to prevail against the many legions of his host. We will not rescue her by marching upon the Black Gate."
There was a long pause.
Then Gimli frowned beneath his russet beard, and turned to the others.
"I'm with Legolas," he huffed. "We sent two wee hobbits into the land of shadows, did we not? If they can gain the Mountain of Fire to destroy the Ring beneath our Enemy's nose, why can we not do the same? I would brave the darkness to rescue the lass from cruelty and death."
On the far side of the table, Gandalf spoke for the first time, and his voice was solemn and heavy.
"Mount Doom stands unguarded across the desolate wastes of Gorgoroth, but Barad-dûr is the very seat of Sauron's dominion," he said. "There sits his black throne. There rises the watchful Eye. There in the high tower he gathers his deadliest servants. It is a treacherous hive of evil and peril, shrouded in the Shadow, guarded by enemies and teeming with foes in droves. Delivering the Ring to its unmaking is a task with little hope of victory, but passing through the doors of Barad-dûr and escaping unscathed and unnoticed from within its walls—with the Dark Lord's most precious prisoner—is an errand beyond all folly. It cannot be done."
Gimli made a sound of disgust.
"Who said anything about escaping unnoticed?" the dwarf growled. "We will fight our way out, with axe and blade!"
But Gandalf shook his head, and seemed weary beyond the measure of Men or Elves.
"Shëanon is beyond our reach, now," he said.
A resounding silence fell over the chamber.
"So we would abandon her?" Legolas asked furiously. "We would leave her to suffer and perish?"
Gandalf looked at him as though with tremendous pity, his lined face grim with regret and the burden of unwelcome truth.
"If the Ring is destroyed and Sauron defeated, she may yet survive. Frodo and Sam are the best hope she has now," he said.
Éomer shifted impatiently.
"And where may they be?" he asked. "This battle has been hard-won, and at a steep price, but will not the Enemy be regrouping even now in his own lands?"
Gandalf grimaced and turned away from the rest, striding toward one of the windows and peering out toward the east.
"He has passed beyond my Sight, but I fear that ten thousand Orcs now stand in Frodo's path," he agreed. He seemed suddenly to doubt. "Perhaps I have sent him to his death."
Aragorn visibly bristled, and cast his gaze about the room.
"Sauron believes that I have the One Ring, and he knows that Shea has been at my side since Amon Hen at least," he reasoned. "He may yet believe that with the Ring I would think myself powerful enough to challenge him and reclaim her. By marching upon the Black Gate to command her release and his surrender, we may yet draw forth his armies—"
"Shëanon is not a diversion," Legolas snapped.
"You think she would not bid us destroy the Ring, whatever the cost?" Aragorn demanded, looking to him with a flare of fire in his eyes. "Many chances she has had to turn from the path laid before her, and always she has journeyed on. She has known from the beginning that our quest could end in her death as easily as in yours or mine. We must ensure the Ring's destruction beyond all else—"
Legolas's face twisted with pain past the point of words, and he turned abruptly away from Aragorn and paced away from the table.
"And in doing so, we buy her best chance!" Aragorn continued, looking imploringly at the back of Legolas's head.
Gandalf appeared grave.
"Sauron will be expecting a trap. He will not take the bait."
"I think he will," Aragorn said.
"What will you do?" asked Éomer, crossing his arms over his chest.
Aragorn drew himself up to his full height.
"Turn his own tricks against him," he said. "I will look into the Palantír. Let us see if he cannot be convinced."
He set his index finger upon the largest, center-most map, where the fading ink upon the creased parchment marked the perilous realm of their foe.
"We will amass all our power at the Black Gate, draw out his host, and keep his Eye fixed upon us. Frodo will have clear passage across the plains of Gorgoroth. If we all succeed, the Ring will be destroyed, Sauron will be vanquished, and we may yet secure Shea's rescue."
"And if Frodo fails?" Legolas asked bitterly.
Aragorn's resolve visibly flickered, and he seemed to steel himself.
"If Frodo fails, we shall all share the same fate," he murmured.
Legolas stood facing away from the table, every line of his body taut and trembling with either fury or fear or great torment that appeared to transcend all else, and for a long moment, no one spoke.
Then Éomer nodded to Aragorn and quietly left the chamber, and as Gandalf stood watching from beside the window, Aragorn silently crossed the room to stand at Legolas's side, and put his hand wordlessly upon his shoulder.
"She's a tough lass," Gimli whispered, in his gruff, staunch voice. He reached to clasp Legolas's other arm. "She'll not easily give up."
Aragorn appeared aggrieved and haggard.
"We will not give up on her," he vowed, attempting to meet Legolas's gaze.
For a long time he did not answer, and endured the wordless assurance of Man and Dwarf at either side, but eventually he turned, and the light of grief and wrath in his ancient eyes surpassed all reason, fathomless and terrible.
In silence, he strode from the hall.
XXX
Shëanon was hurting. Everywhere hurting. Why was she in such pain? Her head was pounding, and her ribs were throbbing worse than ever—as though she'd broken them all over again. Distantly, in the back of her mind, she thought she could hear some small, warning voice… Didn't she know why she was hurt? She felt that she should, but all her thoughts were mired in a dense fog that made her feel slow and sleepy and sluggish. Her eyelids were so heavy, and wouldn't it be better to just sink back into sleep? Perhaps when she awoke again, she would not feel so wretched. Perhaps Aragorn would give her something for the pain.
But that wasn't right. She frowned.
Aragorn couldn't give her something for the pain…
She had to wake up. The voice in her head was getting louder and louder, telling her to wake. Something was wrong. She had to awaken…
"Search her."
"Lift her up, boys."
"I've never tasted she-elf… Oh, I bet she tastes good."
"Anything would taste better than Bîlgrik did."
"Gamy, he was, that chewy weasel rat!"
"Still picking bits of him out of my teeth."
"Just get a whiff of her—she'd be so juicy—"
"I said search her, not sniff her, you worthless beast."
She felt something running over her clothes, and with a burst of dread and understanding, her eyes flew open, and Shëanon shrieked.
She was lying on the cold, hard floor, propped on her side. She realized at once that her hands were bound behind her back, for she tried and failed to move them and instead found that sharp metal dug into her wrists. Looming over her were half a dozen orcs, and their grisly hands were grabbing and groping, and by the dim light of the torches behind them she could see their sharp, gnashing teeth and lascivious eyes leering down at her. No longer was her mind hazy—she was utterly alert in this waking nightmare, and she recalled everything at once: the battle upon the Pelennor Fields, the Nazgûl and being caught in the clutches of the fell beast upon whose back it had ridden, the vivid vision of her companions' desperate debate…
Shëanon realized she must have fainted in terror in the air, and now—
Now she was in Barad-dûr, and these Orcs were speaking longingly of eating her. The one closest licked its scabbed lips as its gnarled fingers bit into her arm—
"Leithio nin!" Shëanon screamed out in horror, thrashing against the hard stone beneath her and futilely attempting to free her hands. "Sasto i gaim 'woer dín od nin!"
"Shut it!" one of them snarled, as he and his fellows continued to touch her.
She didn't heed him, instead continuing to shriek at them over and over to release her and to take their filthy hands off of her, cursing them until she was hoarse as she helplessly flailed and cringed away from their advances. Their putrid skin smelled like a sewer, and their breath upon her face smelled like a dead animal, and the orc that had licked its lips was visibly salivating.
"Touch me and I'll kill you!" she shouted in furious desperation, as he seized the front of her clothes.
The biggest, most vicious one suddenly struck her hard in the face, evidently tired of her screaming, and Shëanon's head smashed back against the rough black stone with the force of it.
"I said shut your mouth, she-elf!" he sneered.
"And I said search her," another voice said from somewhere behind her, and this voice was deeper and clearer and, unmistakably, human.
As Shëanon lay clenching her teeth in pain, the orcs gave a titter of resentment. Her Lórien cloak they tore from her neck. Her belt with her water skin and dagger and empty scabbard they stole from her waist, and even as she struggled they unbuckled her quiver and wrestled it and her bow from her back. When she was divested of her weapons and lay shivering and panting with revulsion and exertion, the orcs obeyed the command of the Man she could not see and began to pat her down. As she felt their vile hands scratch over her sides and up her thighs, she began to thrash harder than ever.
"Don't touch me!" she screamed out in panic, shuddering and flinching as she felt their slimy hands beginning to push aside her clothes. Her blood was rushing in her ears, as she strained again against her restraints without avail. The thought of these monsters touching her bare flesh was unbearable, and as they held her still they continued to muse aloud that she would make an exceptionally good dinner. One reached for the laces of her leggings and Shëanon lurched back and kicked him as hard as she possibly could in his wicked face. Black blood burst at once beneath the sole of her boot, and the orc reeled back and gave a porcine screech of pain.
His eyes when he turned back to her blazed with ire and ill will.
"I should make you regret that," he gurgled maliciously through the blood spilling from his broken nose. "Maybe I should cut that foot off for it—give you a punishment and the boys a snack—or maybe I should take all your clothes, too, and make you go to the Master in nothing but your skin like the dog you are—"
He leaned forward and Shëanon tensed, ready to kick him again—
"Enough."
The orc froze, but was clearly furious to do so. As she lay sweating and shaking on her back on the floor, with her arms trapped and aching beneath her, he and the others scowled but moved back, and a dark figure came to stand at her feet.
Shëanon blinked, dazed, at the person who stood over her. He was tall and dark-haired, with a short beard, and unlike the orcs who wore crude armor over filthy clothes, his black raiment was fine and clean. The blue of his eyes was steely and hard as he gazed down at her.
"Stand her up," he ordered easily, and as she leaned away in disgust, two of the orcs stepped forth once more, hoisted her off the ground, and set her roughly on her feet. The second she was released, Shëanon dove forward. She didn't know what she'd intended to do, for her hands were still chained behind her. Perhaps she'd meant to knock him down, but the orcs caught her arms and hauled her back before she had gotten anywhere near him. What she did know was that the sight of this man incensed her beyond any fury she had ever felt. If the Corsairs of Umbar and the Haradrim warriors had sickened her, this man made her vision white with rage, for as he stood before her he was so alike to Aragorn and to Éomer that it was clear to her at once that he was no foreign mercenary from the east or far south—he looked so much like a man of Rohan or Gondor that she wanted to tear him limb from limb.
"Traitor!" she hissed, fighting against the biting grips of the orc's hands pinching into her flesh. "You traitor! You would serve the Shadow? You would betray your own people? You would betray all the peoples of Middle-Earth?"
"Gag her," the man said lazily, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Oh yes! Command the orcs!" Shëanon spat. "You think yourself above them? You are no better! May the Abyss take you, you coward—!"
A hand snagged her braid and tugged her head back so hard that she cried out, and a foul-tasting strip of cloth was forced between her lips and tied at the back of her head. Even when it was secured, the orcs did not again release her, and her arms were bruising where they held her so tightly, but she had hardly a thought to spare them, now. She stared back at the man in such fury that it practically stole her breath, and she felt dizzy. She thought of the smoking, ruined walls of Minas Tirith and the lifeless bodies of the soldiers and horses before the city gates and thought this man even worse than Gríma Wormtongue.
Watching coldly as she stood—silenced, seething, and restrained—before him, the man nodded toward a black door at the far side of the room.
"Walk," he said shortly.
Shëanon stood rooted to the spot, glaring. The man's face did not change.
"Drag her," he commanded the orcs, who indeed at once began to tow her, staggering, toward the door even as she dug in her heels and resisted, twisting to kick the legs of the two yrch that were holding her and attempting to trip them as they walked. Finally, as the orcs hissed in frustration and forcefully shoved her so hard that she fell and crashed face-first upon the floor, unable to throw her hands out to catch herself, the man seemed at last to have had enough.
While she groaned upon the ground, her cheek throbbing from striking the floor, a silver gleam suddenly appeared, and she peered up at the pointed end of a blade.
"Get up," the man ordered her lowly, in such a voice that she could not doubt he would have no hesitation in cutting her. "And walk."
Very slowly, in her pain and with her hands chained, she was able to get her knees under herself and staggered to her feet. She felt the tip of the sword touch her right between her shoulder blades.
"Walk," the man commanded her again. This time she obeyed him, though she shook with rage to do so.
And as she passed through the door, indeed her rage saved her, for if it weren't for her anger, she would surely have collapsed in fright. Again and again, she saw the recurring vision of herself chained in the dark cell. Again and again, she heard the sneering words of Saruman forewarning her of this fate. Again and again, she saw the fiery figure that had emerged within the Palantír and called to her. There was little doubt whom she would meet wherever this treacherous man was bringing her.
They passed through many dark corridors. The walls, floors, and ceiling were all made of black stone. The torches set in iron sconces along the sides of the passageways were wrought of black metal, and their flames shone dimly. There were few windows, and what windows she passed were high up and impossibly narrow, as though the builder of the tower had added them grudgingly, and the weak light that trickled in through them was so tarnished and insubstantial that it seemed only to affirm the darkness within rather than break it.
Shëanon shivered. Her cheek and the back of her head hurt from striking the stone floor, and from being punched in the face by the orc. She was covered in a cold sweat. Around every turn she was instructed to take, she felt the knots in her stomach coiling tighter and tighter, terrified of what she would find—terrified of what awaited her. She could hear the orcs trailing behind the man with the sword, muttering and growling in their own language, and more orcs could be seen lurking in chambers off the long hallways. More Men there were, too, and her blood boiled at the sight of them, but her outrage was dissipating and bleak dread was taking its place. Utter peril, her father had said. It was clear to her that he had been right. What was going to happen to her? She had no idea what the Enemy had in store, but she was certain it was nothing good, and every orc and man all around her would certainly be eager to harm her in any number of unthinkable ways, so that she was trembling as she walked past them. She didn't think they would kill her just yet—it would seem a waste of effort to feed her to the orcs after going to such pains to capture her, but that did not mean that she was safe.
Somewhere, she could hear an ear-splitting screaming. Someone was shrieking in audible, bloodcurdling agony—perhaps one of the men or orcs had disobeyed his master and was being punished, and the sound of his screams was making Shëanon ill. If death did not yet seem likely, torture certainly did. After all, there were many ways to cause pain without leaving lasting damage—she knew that well enough, already. She remembered what Gandalf had said, that Sauron might hold her hostage for ransom. She thought it very unlikely that if this were the case, she would simply be left alone in some dungeon, and she shuddered to imagine what was being done to cause the far-off screams. Then again, what if whatever purpose the Enemy had for her would be quickly served? Would she soon find herself eaten alive, after all? She glanced anxiously at the creeping, jeering orcs and felt her pulse trip, but then she studied another of the hateful-eyed, staring men, and realized they might be the worse fate.
Nervously, she tried again to free her hands from the binding manacles.
The man behind her urged her through another door, and up a steep black staircase. She climbed in silence, her legs shaking with every step, though she tried determinedly not to let her fear show upon her face. As they ascended the tower, they saw fewer orcs and more men, and the air seemed to grow colder and thinner, as though they were ascending a mountain pass. More screams could still be heard, so shrill that it raised her hair on end, and she cleaved desperately to her courage.
Shëanon knew she needed a plan, and casted frantically about for any ide—however wild—but could think of nothing. How could she possibly hope to escape from Barad-dûr? Even if she could escape the manacles, she would still have to escape her guard, and the hundreds upon hundreds of men and orcs in the tower, and then journey on foot across Mordor with nothing but the clothes on her back. Under the growing weight of her distress, she thought over the vision she had just had. She had no doubt that it had been Minas Tirith she had seen, and she guessed that it was not the future—surely her mind had found someone in the chamber as she had once found Aragorn at the watchtower of Amon Sûl. Anxiously she tried to piece together as much as she could remember. What had Gandalf said? That none of them would be able to pass into Barad-dûr to rescue her?
An errand beyond all folly. It cannot be done.
That was it, then, she realized in despair. There was no hope of escape. If Gandalf did not think they could make it in, she certainly would never make it out.
Her eyes welled.
She remembered the look of sheer horror upon Aragorn's face the second before she had been caught—how he had been sprinting toward her across the field of battle and screaming her name, and she wanted to weep. If she had just turned sooner—if she had paid better attention, then maybe she could have dived out of the way, or shot down the flying beast. Then she thought of Legolas, and of the soul-deep anguish she had seen in her vision, and she was seized by guilt and regret. He had been beleaguered by fear for her safety—he had told her as much himself—and she had tried to convince him that she wasn't in any worse danger than the rest of the company only to go and get herself captured. Shëanon cringed and didn't even want to think about how he must have been feeling, trying in vain to put the image of his torment out of her mind. It was all her fault. With her heart in her throat, she prayed that he had not witnessed her abduction. She thought of how she would feel if she had watched him get snatched up and carried off by one of those loathsome creatures, and felt faint, and—
Suddenly she heard again what Legolas had said upon the deck of the Corsair ship:
'He bid me deliver you over the sea to Valinor, if our quest should fail and the One Ring return to Sauron's hand.'
Shëanon halted without meaning to, and the tip of the sword at once pricked her skin. She flinched and walked again, but in truth she had hardly felt the raw sting. She felt that her blood had turned to ice and her legs to lead.
Could it be possible that Sauron already had the Ring? Panic made her vision blur, and the corridor ahead of her swam before her eyes. What if Frodo and Sam…?
No, she begged. No no no no…
She was breathing so heavily that she began to feel suffocated by the gag, and she swayed on her feet.
Could… could it have all been over? And what had Gandalf told her? That her becoming a captive of Barad-dûr was a future that could not come to pass? And she did not even know for certain why she had been captured in the first place! What if it was very bad? What if he could somehow use her to harm her friends, or retrieve the Ring? Shëanon's teeth chattered against the gag, and she stopped walking again. She needed to find a way out—she needed to do something—Valar, what if it was all up to her?
The man behind her shoved her, and she pitched forward and only just managed to keep her feet.
"Stalling will achieve nothing," the man said. "Walk."
Shëanon stumbled onward, her heart pounding, her mind racing.
Eventually, they came to yet another stairway, and there they were joined by another black-cloaked man who stopped to murmur to his countryman in a language Shëanon could not understand, and the two of them urged her forward up the stairs. Though she dared not turn and look, she could hear that the orcs seemed to have left, and indeed though they passed some more men the higher they climbed, there seemed to be no orcs this high up. And high up they were, indeed. Shëanon's battered ribs were screaming in pain beneath her exertion as she wearily climbed the stairs; they seemed never to end. The muscles in her legs were burning, and she was panting as the two men urged her ever on.
Finally, when she began to worry that she would not be able to make it much longer—when indeed she began to fear what they would do to her if she fell and could climb no more—the men urged her through another door and into what appeared to be a great antechamber with high, vaulted ceilings and another immense, arched door of etched black iron at its other side. There was nothing else in the room but more of the torches along the walls, and two more men who stood at either side of the doorway. They wore black helms and chest-plates along with the same black cloaks she had seen on the others, and they bore immense, wicked-looking spears.
Shëanon drew up short, shaking like a leaf as she beheld these guards and the ornate, menacing door between them.
Then one of the men behind her suddenly untied the knot at the back of her head, tore the gag from her mouth, and—to her surprise—he seemed to procure a key from within his cloak and removed the manacles at last. Shëanon drew her arms forward but could not even spare a glance to check upon her poor, stinging wrists, for she was certain where this door before her must lead and she was frozen on the spot. She cast her gaze wildly about the chamber in search of some escape, and as though sensing her thoughts, the two men seized her by the upper arms and pulled her so forcefully forward that she tripped and stumbled. The two guards stepped forth at once to open the tall, wide doors, and staggering between the men who dragged her, she was drawn over the threshold and into what she dimly realized was an immense, sinister chamber. Though she struggled to regain her footing and fought to throw their hands off of her, the men were hardly hindered and hauled her deeper and deeper into the cavernous hall that she knew beyond doubt held her doom.
XXX
In the middle of the room she was abruptly released, and without the grasping hands holding her she fell upon her knees on the floor. For one instant she did not rise and did not even lift her gaze from the dark flagstones, for she knew what she would see when she did. Shëanon could feel her heart thundering against her ribcage; every part of her body trembled. She stared at the inky, polished black granite beneath her in utter terror, afraid to move. This was it, she was certain. If she looked up…
A sonorous voice spoke from the other end of the chamber.
"Welcome, Shëanon Peredhel."
Stark horror washed over her like an icy wave, immobilizing her completely. She recalled the voice at once.
Where is it? Who are you?
Her eyes squeezed closed. For how many months had she been plagued by it, his voice in her head? From within the Ring, from within the Palantír, hissing in her nightmares and haunting her waking steps. She would have rather faced a hundred Balrogs.
In the blackness of Barad-dûr you will scream and rot and beg for death, and you will rue the day that you refused my charity! Do you wish a new Master, you simpering brat?
So she had come to it, at last. In her throat she felt a sob rising up from her chest, for what else could she do but cry?
But then suddenly Shëanon saw her father's face, as he had stood before her in the burgeoning dawn in Imladris, when the company had first departed. Her last fleeting look at him, over her shoulder. 'Go,' he had bid her. She saw his face in the tent at Dunharrow, when he had said the same thing, and his eyes had been like grievous steel.
She grit her teeth. Would her father cower upon the floor, awaiting his death? She knew in her heart it would not be so, knew the son of Eärendil would have never submitted to such cowardice.
You were my child the moment I saw you.
In burgeoning fury she picked herself up off the floor, her legs shaking, her ribs aching, and rose to stand and face him.
The chamber was as black as all the others, and the ceiling was so high that Shëanon could not see it in the gloom, as though the tall, barbed walls all around stretched ever upward until they opened into a starless heaven—or indeed, the lightless desolation of a black abyss.
And then she saw him.
The scant light that did come in from the narrow windows around the room fell upon his looming figure, but he was not so much illuminated by it as forsaken by it, as though there were some shroud about him that could not be penetrated—as though he were as much a part of the shadows in which he stood as he was distinct from them. But still she could see him, for he appeared to be lit from within as by some devouring spirit, like embers glowing in the charred remains of a fire long-extinguished.
He stepped toward her.
The face of Sauron was both fair and wicked. His hair was paler even than the Lord Celeborn's—stark white in the gloom. He was taller than any Elf or Man that she had ever seen, standing impossibly large before her. There was a gleaming circlet about his brow, and beneath eyes so hideous that Shëanon gasped. They looked themselves to be aflame, as though burning just behind the irises with the inferno she had seen within the Palantír and within the One Ring. Her breath quickened; she wanted to look away but found she could not, for she was completely paralyzed with fear. His gaze was fixed, unwavering, upon her, and it was worse by a hundred times to be pierced by it in person than to be caught by the flaming Eye she had seen in her mind.
"We meet at last," he said in a voice as cold and clear as it was sinister. Shëanon felt that she could not breathe. "Long have I awaited this day."
He took another several steps toward her, but she was still too afraid to move even just to retreat back a few paces, and though her gag had been removed, she still could not speak, rendered completely mute.
With her heart sprinting within her heaving chest, and with a burst of terror, she wrenched her gaze away from his face and glanced down at his hands.
The One Ring was nowhere to be found. Shëanon felt her stomach flip. Surely that meant he did not have it? Surely if he had retaken it at last, it would have been returned at once to his hand, never to be removed?
One of his hands was missing a finger.
She swallowed, feeling herself shiver violently.
"Saruman tried to betray me in this," Sauron spoke. "But my will cannot be forestalled, as you must now at last understand."
He came to stand directly before her, and the sound of his voice was more terrible than the thunderous roar of the orcs breaking against the fortress of Helm's Deep, more terrible indeed than the bone-chilling laughter of the Dead Men of Dunharrow, and worse even than the shrieking beasts of the Nazgûl. His words echoed beneath the immeasurable height of the ceiling, fathomless and cruel, and older than the ages of the world.
Shëanon almost thought she might faint again.
Sauron glared down his nose at her as the silence lengthened.
"No word of entreaty for your host?" he asked eventually. "No pledge of fealty to the master of your fate? Kneel before your lord and ruler, peredhel, and beg his mercy and favor."
Kneel before him!
Shëanon didn't know where her sudden courage came from, but she suddenly burned with such rage that her voice returned at last.
"Servant of Morgoth," she hissed, and spat at his feet.
Sauron's face remained utterly unchanged, and he continued to gaze upon her for so long that she felt a bead of sweat run down her back, but she refused to look away.
"Yes," he said at last, as though in deep satisfaction. "A temperament befitting one of such descent."
A frigid chill coursed through every part of her, the warning voice of alarm sounding once again within her mind like the tolling bell of Edoras.
"What do you want with me?" she demanded, in a voice that sounded much braver than she felt. "I am of no use to you."
Sauron stepped closer.
"You are of great use to me indeed," he said.
Shëanon wrestled for her composure, urgently trying to keep her wits, but in her mind she could hear nothing but the voice of Saruman once again: your blood is worth more than the Dúnadan's head. She could tell that Sauron was watching her closely, as though she were a fascinating quarry he had long waited to study, and she swallowed. In the corner of her eye she could still see the men who had brought her in, standing guard.
Her mind was working furiously.
"I will never help you," she said nervously, finally succeeding in taking an inching step back and away from him. She was panting.
Sauron smiled a pitiless smile, and it was the most wicked he had yet looked, his entire face lit with malice.
"Help?" he repeated indifferently. "Your willingness is of no consequence to me. I need only take what I will."
She crept back another step, sick with fright at the image his words evoked.
"Perhaps—perhaps I would not let you," she stammered.
At this suggestion, Sauron appeared utterly unfazed.
"You think yourself my match?" he asked, his regard penetrating and certain. "I beheld the great Emptiness ere the creation of Eä filled the Void. I have endured every age of Arda through time and before time. I have seen mountains upraised and felled, oceans delved, earth flooded, and the very hosts of Fire and Darkness mingled to break the foundations and firmament of the world in bitter battle beyond your comprehension, and I alone have prevailed. No child of the Firstborn or the Secondborn—nor half-breed mongrel—might hope to triumph over the Lord of the Rings."
Shëanon lunged.
Without turning she stepped back and rammed her elbow into the body of the guard on her right, the one who had commanded the orcs, and as he shouted and doubled over, she grasped the pommel of his sword and drew it fast from its sheath. The other man drew his own weapon and rushed forward, but already she had stepped away from them both and turned the sword upon herself.
The two men froze, and she looked back to Sauron.
"It is my blood that you seek, is it not?" she bit out in desperation. She pressed the edge of the blade against her throat. "I would sooner spill it all than let you have it."
No one in the chamber moved, and for a moment Shëanon could hear nothing save for the pounding of her own heart, the sharp edge of the sword ice cold against her skin. Then Sauron laughed, mirthless and awful, and it raised every hair on her body to hear it echoing around the cavernous chamber.
"You do your line proud," he said at last, turning his terrible yellow eyes back upon her. "I am not disappointed. It is plain that you are as spirited as your kin. Spill your blood if you will. It is of no difference to me. Now you are here I have the means to take what I need well enough."
Shëanon stood trembling, the blade shaking in her grasp. She gazed back at him in dread, but she had no way to tell if he was bluffing. If he spoke true she would end her life for naught, but if he deceived her...
He needed her blood for something, and she felt certain she must keep it from him at any cost.
Her fingers shook around the pommel of the sword. She felt that whatever she did next was crucial—that she had one chance to make the right decision, though she knew not what it was.
"What use is my blood to you?" she choked. "Tell me."
Sauron looked back at her.
"You know not?"
Her chest was heaving so hard that the sword nicked her skin without her meaning it to.
"This is unexpected. I have known the touch of your mind, and you are not as witless as Saruman the White thought you. Have you not yet guessed?"
Shëanon could not have answered if she tried.
Then Sauron began to stalk slowly around her, circling like a wolf, while she frantically tried not to let him out of her sight.
"Tell me," he said. "Do you know how it is a ring of power is made?"
Somehow she had the presence of mind to shake her head.
"I thought not. Powerful as the earth may be, no element alone is endowed with such virtue as a ring of power bestows upon the bearer. More is needed in the crafting than precious metals or stones—"
Shëanon cut him off.
"I know that you poured yourself into the One Ring," she said. "I know that it is your evil gives it will—your malice—"
"Foolish girl," he sneered. "My malice? What is malice but a matter of belief? Who can say what is malicious and what is not?"
"Ilúvatar," Shëanon spat. "Manwë—"
"You invoke such names," he said icily, "but have they not forsaken this world? They abandon Arda to its fate, and in doing so they abandon it to me. Tell me then, if they stand by and do nothing, is not my malice their own? Who then decides what is evil—"
"I say it is evil!" Shëanon shouted.
"And how do you think," Sauron asked calmly, "that such a thing would come to be worked and smithed? How might malice or evil be crafted into a ring? Give it power?"
Shëanon somehow knew the answer at once.
"I did not pour malice into my rings," Sauron said.
She let the sword fall, the top of the blade clattering as it hit the floor, the handle held limply in her hand as it hung at her side. She recoiled in revulsion.
"Yes," he said. "Power cannot be created. Only passed from one vessel to another."
"Through blood?"
"Have you guessed yet?" he pressed. "Why your blood is of such worth?"
He came to stand once more directly before her.
"My blood is in the rings of power, it is true," Sauron conceded. "In all... but three."
"Three," she whispered weakly.
She knew the rings of which he spoke, knew even where each was kept and who kept them: Galadriel, Gandalf, and Elrond himself. How many times had she looked upon Vilya with her very eyes, on the hand of her father? Twenty rings in total she knew: nine for the race of Men and seven to the Dwarves, and Sauron had had a hand in the crafting of them. But the three Rings given to the Elves had been forged by Celebrimbor alone, and thus were free of the corrupting power of the others.
"They call the others the lesser rings," Sauron said with audible disdain. "And the Three the greater. Narya, Nenya, and Vilya, and it is not my blood used in their crafting but the blood of Telperinquar—Celebrimbor, son of Curufin."
Shëanon was trembling from head to toe, for she could sense that she was coming close to the greatest revelation of her life.
"What has that to do with me?" she asked in dread.
"For an age I have sought the Three, desiring to take them under my full influence, but there is now another way. I can not imbue the Three with my blood, but I can infuse The One with the blood of Celebrimbor, and in so doing they will be fully bound to my will at last."
It was immediately clear to her where this was leading.
"You think I am of his blood," she said in astonishment.
Sauron glared at her.
"I know you are of his blood," he said callously.
Shëanon shook her head, feeling the panic wash over her.
"It is not possible," she argued. "Celebrimbor Curufinwion has been dead—"
"Dead indeed," Sauron agreed. "A rash and unfortunate mistake, one which I rued ever after. But it matters little now. He is your kin... through your father."
Her heart swelled with abrupt fury, and her fingers tightened once more around the handle of the sword.
"My father is Elrond Peredhel," she snarled.
"Your loyalty to him is touching," Sauron said coldly, his gaze piercing her. "But meaningless. He is not your sire, as you know well."
Shëanon closed her eyes, which to her horror had begun to fill with tears.
Would you live the rest of your miserable life longing for that which you will never know? I assure you, if you do not give your questions to me now, they will be unanswered forever.
She suddenly felt as though her entire life had been leading to this one moment—that the whole world had narrowed to this chamber, this question, this answer at last. Every sleepless night spent in wonder, every doubt and desperate yearning flashed before her eyes: the taunting words of Saruman, the worry she had confided in Legolas, the looks on the faces of Elrond and Galadriel and Gandalf when she had sought resolution and clarity after a life spent in disquiet and suspense. Here at the last, she would know.
"Name him," she demanded.
The face of Sauron sparked, as though he could see her conflict and turmoil and took sadistic pleasure in this power he so obviously wielded.
"You know his name already," he said. "I can see it in your eyes. You know there is only one survivor of that house—only one name that I might speak."
Shëanon shook her head, but he was right. If what he spoke was true, there was only one name he could possibly say. She felt that the room around her was spinning.
"The house of Fëanor," he said.
Her tears wet her cheeks.
"No."
"Canafinwë," he taunted.
"You're lying!" she cried.
Sauron's eyes were as a bright flame.
"You know that I am not. Your father is Maglor Fëanorion."
Translations:
Leithio nin - Release me
Sasto i gaim 'woer dín od nin - Take your filthy hands off me
A/N:
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