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You will find me, if you want me, in the garden
– unless it’s pouring down with rain.
You will find me by the banks of all four rivers,
you will find me at the spring of consciousness.
you shall find me, if you want me, in the garden
the road
Deep in the shadows underneath the wrecked trees, they press into the side of the hill. Above, the enemy gathers. Torches spill spears of pale orange light through the fallen fir’s crown. Feet shuffle. Noses and muzzles sniffle around on the precipice above. The night is dead silent, and she clasps her hand tighter over the boy’s mouth. She knows these sounds, and the dying trees confirm it with their fearful tanine scent: Orcs. A whole regiment.
Galadriel listens carefully, while the light-spears creep over the ground before them, closer. Closer. If even one hits her plate, she’s done for. She pulls the boy Theo closer, hoping his cloak will cover her. Most of the shuffling feet depart down the pathway. But the light above remains. Carefully slow, she peers up: A bulky, white Orc in a snakeskin cloak is directly above them. Farther behind, she sees a smaller figure, bowed, lanky.
“Hunter, you smell something, eh?”, the large orc’s companion beckons, voice rough and unpleasant. The other sniffs the smoky air again. “Nah”, the Hunter croaks, displeased but still wary. “Just... ash.”
They vanish back into the night, on quiet feet. Far quieter than she thought they could move. These ones are not Morgoth’s brainless slaves. They are careful. Even those she met in battle knew quite soon when the fight was lost and surrendered on their own. And afterwards, they had vanished alongside their leader, leaving next to no trace.
She finally releases the boy, listening to their retreat. Even for her Elven ears, they are hard to hear. Someone trained them.
Something greater is at work here, and although the creature Adar did not smell of Sauron himself, his work is ripe with his cunning. More than the orc let on. Or maybe even more than he knew himself. Perhaps he was just executing an order. Just… he had not spoken like a slave. His conviction to his cause had been clear. He’d been… she shakes the memory of his hands from her mind. Not now.
Whatever is brewing and stirring in the cover of Orodruin’s wrath, she will not sit idly by again. The opportunity is here, and she will not waste it. Swiftly, she slinks past her ward, half out of the shadowed hideout.
She surveys the twilit landscape, then the boy, and holds out her sheated sword. “Take this sword, brave one, and follow our heading. The camp is at the mouth of the vale, on the southern slope. Give word to the Queen Regent to expect me”, she whispers to the boy Theo. “I’ll give you the opportunity to get out unseen.”
He clutches her arm. Terror is plain on his face: “Don’t leave me.”
She smiles at him but slips his hand off, determined. “I must find out where our enemy gathers, boy, and who is truly behind this.” With an encouraging nod and a squeeze of his shoulder she pushes past him: “Trust that I will return. This should be an easy first mission for you, so steady on, little soldier.”
Hesitantly, he nods once, clasping the sword to his chest. Without giving him the chance to reply, she steals out of their hiding place, after the orcs.
There are only three of them, most of the cohort seems to have split off and taken another path. She observes for a while, but she cannot find any sign of the others. That gives her the confidence to advance further. The orcs progress slowly, carefully checking their environment, keeping their torches low. Astonishing. Never has she seen such behaviour. In the darkness of the Northlands, she encountered orcs with silvery, over-large eyes who never even used fire to light the night for them. And those never walked quietly. None she encountered ever had.
She follows them for half a mile, until the path runs down a steep slope to a brook cutting a ravine into the burnt woodland. It is carved deep into the hillside, the ground worn away by many feet. At its midpoint a narrow bend leads down to a ford. The orcs stop there, just below the bend and the big one starts sniffing again.
“What’s it now, Hunter? Something out there?”, the rear-guard asks, but his voice is less sure than before. He seems to suspect, too, that they are not alone in those woods. The curve in the road shortens the distance between them, and no matter that it hides her from their sight, she must be easier to detect for their other senses. By the light, she came too close… Angry at herself, she ducks deeper into the shade.
“We are followed”, the Hunter growls, baring his ragged teeth. “Elf-flesh. The She-Elf from the village. The commander.”
Oh, they remember her. She smiles grimly.
There are steps, the rear-guard returns around the bend. Torch-light floods in her direction. No choice, then. She will not be able to outrun them, not in the night in this ruin of a land that draws heavier on her fëa with every step. No – there’s only one way.
She takes charge.
The rear-guard whirls, but she has already hurled herself at him. His torch roars straight past her. Too late. Finrod’s dagger flashes white and angry in its light as she cuts his throat. The orc goes down, gurgling blood. She is already onto the second.
She ducks under the badly aimed sabre, grips his sword arm. Twists it. She side-steps, around him and jerks him around. Her full mass and speed go into that pivot, and she spins him into the Hunter. They smash together. A clatter of swords and armour, and before they have a chance to raise a defence, she unbalances both with a shove. Torches drop with angry hisses and before they have regained their stance, she grabs the Hunter by his shoulder, slips behind him and pushes the dagger into his sword arm to incapacitate him. He howls in pain. She grabs his ratty scalp, jerks it back and him back against her. The tip of Finrod’s dagger halts at his jaw, ready to cut his neck, and he immediately shuts his mouth.
The smaller orc freezes as he sees his wounded leader at her mercy.
“Throw your weapons down!”, she demands with venom. They stare at her, panting heavily. Only the splatter of bloody and the death throes of the rear-guard disturb the eerie silence of the burnt forest as the orcs exchange fearful looks. She tilts her dagger up, draws black blood on the fine blade without much force.
Two sabres clutter to the ground. Good. They are afraid. Those two are hardly a match for her, even without the element of surprise – and it seems they got that, too. She smiles grimly. Nevertheless, the howl could have alerted others, better to have that big orc as leverage. No way back now.
“Adar warned us of you”, the hunter growls, “said you’d be in leagues with Sauron. That so?”
“Sauron?”, she snarls incredulous and pushes the dagger a little further into his skin. “Shut your filthy mouth, vermin.” Something, darkly, suddenly clicks into place. So, Adar knows something about Sauron. If what he claimed is true, he served under Morgoth, so he probably knew the Lieutenant, too. He knew the symbol, the blade. The volcano. And Halbrand seemed to know him, too… Strange. It’s worth taking the risk.
“You will take me to your captain, the one you call Adar. He’s the one I’m looking for. You shall live if you bring me to him”, she demands. The orcs exchange another look. Whether she’ll keep that word or not, time will prove. Should Adar’s horde pose too much of a threat at first sight, she will kill them and flee rather than fall prisoner.
“Do it, Thrâk”, the Hunter grimaces. “Adar will handle her.” The small one complies reluctantly, throwing glances.
By the light of a single, diminishing torch he takes them through the night into the light of a gloomy, strange day. Where the air was the colour of fire the day before, it is now darker, blue-black, rust-brown, and ugly. They walk straight back into the desolation. Ash covers the land like a crude, dark snow, but it does not muffle the sound of their steps as winter would. The air stinks heavily of sulfur and smoke, and the further they come, the hotter it gets. Almost no greenery is left. It has burnt away or is still burning. Chunks of blackened rocks have left craters, smaller at first, then getting bigger. In the wake of the pyroclastic storm the trees have been snapped and the grass and bushes singed. There’s nothing left but charred ghosts. Only them, wanderers in hell.
For a moment she is relieved that she doesn’t have to walk this hellscape alone.
When they have made about two miles of progress, the Hunter squirms in her hold: “Let go of me, elf witch. I won’t run.”
“The promise of an orc”, she sneers.
The small orc cast a hateful glance over its shoulder at her: “The promise of a warrior. Let him go.”
“Quiet, Thrâkh”, the Hunter barks at it.
“Warriors? You are nothing but slaves”, she spits.
The small one, Thrâk, spins around and growls at her like a beast. “Not with Adar, no more!“
“Enough, vermin”, she hisses and another rivulet of black blood trickles down the Hunter’s neck. “You will both shut your foul mouths, or I will shut them for you. Now, the way?!”
Glowering, Thrâk turns and stomps on ahead. The Hunter needs a push to get moving, but he, too, doesn’t try anything else for the rest of the way, even though he starts limping after a while.
Their march ends atop a hillside, overlooking the plains east of the mountain range, out onto Orodruin. She halts there, abruptly, all strength robbed from at the sight. The full extent what the enemy has done… Valar, the doom is all-encompassing. Nothing in this land is alive anymore – and it never again will be. Even the ground is so shaken in terror that its very soil has fallen into catatonia. There is no sound, no song. Even the wind is silenced, a mere foul miasmatical dying breath.
Above them, the sky is torn apart by rivers of flame, as is the ground. Mount Orodruin has been gutted and still spills forth his dreadful load of destruction. The fields and valleys are running red with its gleaming blood. And it’s plume of smoke drowns the skies in black.
Eternal night.
“What have you done?”, she whispers, shock falling into her like gallons of ice. None of the orcs answer, and that might have been their luck. Had they, she would have slain them.
After a while, she blinks, and shakes herself out of the stupor. “Where is he?”
“It’s down there”, the Hunter finally says, pointing to a nest of glimmering fires at the foot of the hill. The village. So, he is still there. Gloating over the corpses of innocent people…!
A rage so terrible overcomes her that she nearly takes her dagger to the monstrosities to eviscerate them right there just for the sake of it. It takes all her discipline to hold back.
“You”, she snarls at Thrâk. “Run to your master, tell him I’m-“
“No need.”
She knows that voice. And in the way the orcs relief their posture at its sound, she finds it confirmed. Adar: “Let go of them, Galadriel.”
the tilling
Slowly, she turns. Knife at the Hunter’s throat. Teeth bared.
He waits at the edge of the very forest they have just left. There’s a small company of his orcs with him. Four archers, two with clubs, one with a crude sword. They form a crescent around them, weapons ready. The other two must have known and led her straight into his trap. Inwardly, she curses herself. She wasn’t thinking.
“Send your warriors away, abomination”, she demands coldly, “or this one dies.”
“Thrâk”, Adar nods at the small, gangly one, her guide. His eyes are strangely kind. “Return to the camp. Tell them to ready for the march. We will follow. And see to a healer if you are wounded.”
The little one bows with shining eyes. “Adar”, it whispers with reverence, then it turns and hurries away. Under her blade, the Hunter stiffens, as if he readies to fight. She adjusts the knife again. It scrapes across his blotchy skin with hunger. “One wrong move and you’ll-“
Adar slowly raises his hand. “No need, Galadriel”, he tries to appease, then takes a few unhurried steps forward. “Largesh, did she hurt you?” It takes her a moment to realize that he speaks to the Hunter. His voice is low, neutral. It’s hard to discern what he’s playing at.
“I have been stabbed, lordfather, but it is not serious. She took our weapons away. Guthmô fell”, the Hunter answers. His voice is gravelly, strained.
Adar nods, once. His eyes darken. “Guthmô would have deserved a place in the new land”, he replies grimly, and turning to his company, he adds: “He is with us.”
“He is with us”, the others echo in unison.
Bewildered, she stares at them. Names? Memory? What, by the light, is at play here?
The abomination comes closer again, only a few steps. He’s not yet in her reach, but that doesn’t matter much with two arrows pointed at her head. “Let Largesh go, Galadriel”, he pleads. His voice is gentle, he even opens his palms in placation. “You have my word that we will not harm you.”
She snorts. “Again, the word of an orc-“
“Uruk!”, the pale grey orc with the sword to Adar’s left interrupts her, and the Hunter, Largesh, nods until he remembers the blade at his neck.
“Calm, Beshla”, Adar says, a smile on his lips. Is that pride? “She has not accepted it, yet. You remember that it was hard for all of us at first. But she will. She wants something, and she would be a fool to throw a good barter away with my Hunter’s life.”
The one called Beshla inclines his head. “You vouch for her, Adar?”
“I give you my word that she will see reason and not hurt you if you lower your arms”, he says with confidence. “So do that, my warriors, stand down.”
Puzzled, Galadriel watches pale orc Beshla lower his sword. Then two of the archers follow his example. One of them, a pallid one, makes a low curring sound, the other answers it with a sequence of harsh gestures. Adar turns to him, signing with his hands as well. From his hands, the signs flow forward faster, and with more ease. What is that? Another ambush? “Fear not”, says Adar calmly, directly to the pale archer, “he will be fine, Ilsh-Thâ. Galadriel will lower that blade soon. Her qualms are not with your brother, but with me.” The words accompany the gestures. Is this… a secret code? The archer signs something back, then his hand returns to the bowstring. But it remains undrawn.
“My qualms are with all of you”, Galadriel growls, “for the darkness you brought upon this land.”
For a long moment, Adar eyes her, his gaze melancholic. “Brothers, lay your arms down”, he finally says with a soft surrender she would not have expected from him. “There is no use in putting one of our own to risk if that is not the point of the encounter. Largesh, tell her, what will we do when she takes that blade away?”
The Hunter carefully turns his head an increment to meet her eye. “Let me go and I walk. Father will have my wounds tended. And if you wish it, he will bring you into the camp. If you wish to speak with him, he will hear you. But if you wish to fight him, he will take your blood and spill your life, She-Elf.”
She stares at the bulging yellow pupils of the orc, and the grim, ugly face. She would have expected a sneer. But his voice rings true. And his gaze is earnest. She blinks, suddenly disoriented. Adar meets her eyes with the same sincerity. Into her hesitation, the others in Adar’s company sheathe their weapons. All watch her keenly.
A standoff will lead nowhere. She would risk the fight if it weren’t for the archers. So far, Adar proved to be easy to handle with talk. He’s clever, cunning, but not violently so. Before, he had merely pushed back as hard as she had pushed him.
Her heart gallops wildly as she finally lowers the dagger. This is not going at all as she hoped.
Suddenly, finally, fear creeps into her system. Of the alien creatures to whose power she just subjected herself, and it runs marrow-deep. She braves it, the onrush of panic in her guts, as the Hunter takes a step away from her. He does it cautiously, stiffly, as if she would strike and cut him down no matter her word. Then he jumps from the reach of her dagger with a few quick, long strides. How warped are these creatures that they take more confidence in the say-so of a slave of Sauron than one of the highest of the Noldorim?
It saddens her, and it angers her.
As soon as Hunter steps out of her reach a collective sigh runs through the group of orcs. The pale archer rushes forward, Ilsh-Ta Adar called him, and grips the tall orc’s head to bring their brows together. Largesh returns the gesture, affectionate, and even hugs the other close. She hears him utter a word to the other orc that chills her deeper than the fear of being overpowered: “I’m fine, gwadâl.” Gwathel, sister in-all-but-blood.
“You did well.” Adar nods at her. “Thank you for letting him go. I will release the others, then we can talk, if that is your wish.”
Bewildered, she nods, the dagger in her hand quivering.
“Leave”, Adar dismisses his guard with but a word, “go back to camp and make your preparations, my children. I know you all are eager to claim your own land.”
With many weary glances at her and their leader most of them start to trudge away, alone or in pairs. They do not question him. Only two of them stay. An archer with a distrustful squint to his eyes, and Beshla with the crude sword.
Shortly, she thinks to run. She could make it, if...
Adar’s eyes fall on her. “If you wish to leave, do so. You will not be hindered.”
She shudders. Has he-?... has she grown careless and opened her mind too far? How does he know?
“Your thoughts are on your face, Galadriel”, he says calmly and comes closer still. Within reach, if she lunged forward. The orc behind him watches with apprehension. She knows what being in his place feels like: Having to defend someone prone to recklessness.
She twirls Finrod’s dagger once, slowly, so both guards can get a good look at it. Then she sheathes it. And they breathe lighter.
“So, why have you come here?” Adar takes another casual step toward her. He looks tired, worn. Yet, the earlier tension in him has subsided to a calmness she only knows of the Eldar. “I dare not hope to have convinced you into desertion, commander of the Noldorim”, a lopsided grin. It’s a poor joke, even for an orc. A low growl erupts from the orc with the sword and Adar laughs gently, sardonically. “Fret not, Beshla, I am afraid that we’d sooner see Orodruin take his wrath back than see a Noldor take our side. They had their chances, and they were never hesitant of signing their decision with a blade.”
“You do us great injustice, fallen one”, she retorts harshly, “for you are servants of Morgoth’s and the proof is laid bare here of what you seek to make of the world. Where you tread, death and ruin blossom and blood spreads like rain.”
“You’ve seen but the tilling of the soil, elf, and nothing yet of seed or stem or flower”, Adar answers placidly, appeasing his two guards with his outstretched hands.
Galadriel feels her anger rise. “How can I, when all there is left is ash and soot?!”, she bellows.
Her voice booms loudly, uncanny in the silent vale.
Adar meets her ire with unchanged calm. He says nothing, not with words. But his eyes, pale in the gloom, beckon her. How can this harbinger of despair be so sure, so calm that there is good in what he does? The green lands are gone, and nothing but hellfire prospers here. Nothing but darkness.
He finally answers her: “New life, in defiance of death.”
“What?!” She staggers, the words but a lashing of mockery.
A lightning rod, piercing her heart with utter fury. Something ruptures, implodes with such terrible might that her ears ring.
Then she leaps. She roars. Her wrath tears free, shoots out through every crack in her composure, snaps her arms and legs forward. She hurls herself at him, propelled by white-hot hatred.
The dagger stops a finger’s width deep in his armpit, between his ribs. It cut clear through chainmail and cuirass.
His eyes are bright in shock. And something else.
Then she is yanked back, the blade brutally wrung out of her hand. Her head is ripped back by her hair. She screams and digs her fingers into his neck to hold on and wrestles against the claws around her arms. A hard kick into her side leaves her hanging winded.
“Let her!” – “LORD ADAR!” – “LET- HER!”
Suddenly, gravity functions again. She heaves a breath in. And another.
Only then she realizes that the orcs have stepped back. That she kneels above him, her weight crushing his throat into the burnt ground. Her fingers curl around his neck in a desperate hold. Not enough to choke him. Disturbed ash settles around them in veils of dust. They are sprawled against each other, plate on plate. Breath mingling. Her ears ring. A heavy copper scent tinges the iron frowst on his breath. He bleeds. A minor cut in his lip. Her hand itches for her dagger, to finish it. But her eyes will not obey to search for it.
They are locked with his. So close.
So close to killing him. Being rid of him. But she cannot bring herself to look away, or to choke him to death. She is frozen, trapped.
So close, still.
There is no fear in his eyes. Something worse. Far worse. Pity, she thinks first, but that is not it. Understanding.
She takes her weight off his throat, falls back sitting on her heels, his leg between hers. He sucks in an audible breath. His eyes flutter in relief. There are red streaks forming on his white skin, trails she left beneath marks of soot.
“Lord Adar?”, one of the orcs asks tenderly. “Shall we send-“
“No. No.” He quickly shakes his head, does not take his eyes off hers. “But give her the blade back.”
Her eyes widen in surprise as the orc obeys without question. Felagund’s dagger is handed over by a pale, gouty claw. More lizard than humanoid, she notices. Gingerly, she takes it back. Her arm got twisted in the fight. Closing the hand hurts, and there isn’t much strength left in the muscle. She will not be able to strike hard with it. Incredulous, she looks up at the orc. It is the one with the sword. Beshla. It immediately steps out of reach. Scared? No, not quite. There is genuine worry plastered all over its ugly, alien features. It stares at her, not in anger, but with the set expression of a defender, someone about to drive a wolf away from a loved one.
A… what? Her eyes dart between the creature and it’s master.
Again, a crack runs through her. It starts under the metal of the blade, in the palm of her hand, and chases the whole length of her body up to her chest, leaving only a searing numbness in its wake and a burning in her heart.
She looks down again. No, that heat is not her heart burning. But his hand on her chest-plate, holding her up and away. In self-defence. He watches her calmly, as she readjusts to this new understanding.
It was her who started this. Orodruin’s destruction is another matter, but this is a fight she brought to these lands.
He does not take his hand away as she falters back, sliding off him in numb defeat. Black blood stains the soot under them. He bleeds from the cut. The image blurs, warps. A dizzying sensation wraps her up in its rush. She reels.
And the dagger falls. Its silvery steel rings clear as it clatters against his plate. Like a great wind the rustle of chainmail on armour plate fills her ears. It hits her, engulfs her like white water rapids, and drowns her for a moment. She lingers in that place of darkness and defeat for a heartbeat or two.
Was she so wrong?
‘New life, in defiance of death,’ his words ring clear and loud in her mind again as the world regains its speed, and blinking, she finds herself steadied by his arms.
She shakes them off, and scrambles back as if singed. Remembering being this close to him once, half a day ago, before the world burned. The dagger remains in his lap.
He gently takes it, traces its finely crafted hilt and pommel with his eyes while she struggles to even her breath again. The steel looks flat in the unlight of this cursed day, the silver grey against the pallor of his hands, and the gold dulled. “A work of King Thingol’s court, is it not? Of Doriath?”
“What?”, she breathes. “Why would you-“ Know? Care? Her mind is reeling to make sense of him.
“We fought the Sindar once. Formidable, I can tell you that. A painful day.” He traces a long cut that splits his face with the shining tip. “Admirable fighters. And stars, were they a sight, weren’t they, Beshla?” He chuckles wistfully, and the orc hums in agreement. “The master sent us into their blades with leather wraps for armour, and metal scrap for swords. They mowed two generations of us down like grass in the hour before dawn. At Tol Sirion.” Tol Sirion? – the Elvish name, before Sauron tainted the place. She blinks at him, bewildered.
He rises to his knees, places the dagger before her with a respectful gesture. He knows this is no profane thing for her. “Here.”
“How did you survive, then, when you faced Doriath’s warriors and were no match for them?”, she asks bitterly, implying cowardice in her mockery. Not that she cares for the answer. It will probably be a lie.
A shadow falls over Adar’s face, and it is the orc that answers her in a hushed voice: “Sauron sent his werewolves. Those of us that were still alive by then fled the field, for these beasts do not know friend from foe. They rend everything that is stood before them. Don’t call us cowards, elf, you would have run, too, had you been in our place and seen these shining enemy warriors torn like straw puppets in their maws.”
She picks up the dagger, heart suddenly heavy with mourn. “My brother was there. That was where he died, in Tol-in-Gaurhoth, imprisoned by your master and fighting such a demon. He killed it with his hands.”
The fallen elf looks at her with great sadness. I know, say his eyes. “Finrod”, he quietly adds, “a true master of song.”
You knew him? She starts to shiver in disbelief. Her fingers clasp the dagger hard. She feels hollowed out, the oath of her brother pulling heavy on her.
Adar stands slowly, looking out over the desolation. His armour is as sullied as hers, and the wound in his side is soiling the plate with dark blood. “Your brother sacrificed his life to defeat Sauron in Tol Sirion, and thus helped in Morgoth’s defeat. His spirit lives on in you, Galadriel.”
To hear that from her enemy is too much: “Don’t speak his name, orc. You are not worthy of his memory, or his name, servant of Sauron!”, she hisses. “The world would be better if you were dead, all of you.”
A backhanded slap hits her hard. Her lip splits, and blood is on her teeth. “Shut your mouth, elf witch!”, the orc Beshla shouts. “How dare you-!”
“Is that not what you are? Sauron’s slaves?”, she spits out before him.
Adar looks at her with a great sadness in his eyes. “No, Lady Galadriel. We are slaves no more.” He holds his gauntleted hand out to her. It is smeared with dark blood. He does not seem to care. “If you allow me to show you...?”
She does not take it, but clambers to her feet on her own, pushing the dagger back into its sheath. “Show me what?”
He gestures down the hill, to the camp. “You have my promise that you may leave any time you wish, but you will not see reason until you have seen. So, please, follow me”, he asks her, and were it not for the desperation weaving into his words, she would have left then and there, “at least to see them for yourself.”
All the way down, she wrestles with the temptation to turn and run, to leave this stone unturned. In the end, she still follows him all the way. They reach the encampments, the burning huts, the battlefield she escaped only hours prior. Her heart grows tight and heavy at the sight. And she hates herself for even coming here, into this desolation. Above, a rolling rumble of distant thunder rolls over the stained sky.
the soil and the seed
The refugees of Southland and Númenor have left. Only their dead remained. There are only few of them left. With great surprise she sees them lined up in orderly rows, rested on cloth or boards, and unsullied. Only then she realizes that she expected defilement, not respect. Further out, she sees figures in the grey fog, shovelling holes into the ground, and others carrying the bodies to them. They are burying the dead. She stops.
“Why do you bury them?”, she asks.
Adar throws her a long glance. “Didn’t I tell you? We are slaves no more”, he says and walks on. “We shape our own fate now.”
A creeping terror wells up in her, at what his words entail. She cannot place it, yet. Shaken, she trudges behind him through the camp, the orc Beshla and the archer behind her. Many orcs have gathered, all watch her fearful or with hate, their stares prickle on the back of her neck. More than once, they shout hails to Adar, calls of reverence. More than once, he nods gracefully at some of them, indicating bows.
This one is a strange lord, getting stranger each moment she spends in his presence. He leads her straight into the heart of their camp. Which will mean death as soon as she loses his favour. She is well trapped here, and suddenly the fear of it takes her.
He seems to sense it because he turns. First to her, then he speaks to his orcs: “She is not to be harmed. And she may go freely, where she wishes, and unharmed”, he shouts to those assembled.
A smaller orc moves forward. His visage is deeply rivened by age, his back bent, and his arms comically stretched. When he speaks, his voice is but a brittle wheeze: “Father, is she not Noldor, and thus enemy?” Agreement is hummed within the ranks of the orc. The creature looks expectantly at Adar.
“Is she?”, he asks back. Not unfriendly but challenging. “What you say may be right, and it may not.“ He turns to the crowd at large. “I found she can learn. I found she came alone to us here, and with questions. None of the Noldorim did such a thing before. As did none of the enemy.”
“But she carries steel, Adar!” – “She killed Guthmô! She wounded Largesh!” – “She is Elf. Elf hates us!”
The cries of protest are loud and manifold - and immediate. He steps forward to meet them. “Yes. Yes, all of that might be true, Uruks. And it is true for me, as well, as is my suspicion of her. And yet, I ask you again, what else can be found true in this council. Is she enemy? Should we not listen to her once? Is it wrong to hate her?”
“No, father, it is not!”, some shout. Others look at each other, confused. A great murmur erupts in the crowd. He raises his hands to quiet them. She senses that this is not uncommon with him, that they expect this from him: Raising questions, challenging beliefs. And yet this seems to be new: Questioning the foundations of their hatred.
When he speaks, he kneels to the old Uruk, takes his hands with unexpected tenderness. But he is speaking to all of them: “You and I were brethren and kin from the first days of our lives. But she, too, shares that history. Because from her kin our kind was created. In cruel ways, sure, but it is nonetheless true. We were separated by the masters, so her kind forgot our names and our kinship”- she snorts at that –“and we forgot our origins and hopes to return to them. I am Uruk now, and I am proud to be counted among you, but living among you I was Elf for the longest time, and I despaired over it to be neither of both fully. I share your history, children, many of you came to life through me, and I don’t blame you if you choose to hate the elves. There is not much space for innocence in our history, and neither in mine own. But if you find you can make a little room for curiosity, for tolerance, for kindness, you will find us not so different, Uruk and Noldor Elf. I hear your objections but let me say this: Guthmô fell by her blade, but-“, he slaps his hand against his chest plate once, hard –“it was me who told him to go. I sent him there and he proudly went. Larkh-Ekêzh was hurt, but he was wise enough to know when to stand down and trust my judgment – and hers.”
The crowd moves again, some whisper, some hiss as he raises his arm and bares the stab wound, still leaking black blood. “And she hurt me, too-“, he stands, slowly, looks at her from pale eyes without reproach, “but I saw it was done in confusion and fear, and I chose to take pity and welcome her nonetheless.”
“Confusion?”, she scowls. “What confusion is there? You insulted me and mine with your crude ideas.”
Behind her, Beshla snorts: “And there we thought, this seed-sowing and muttering of verses was a crude idea of Elves…”
She turns on him, her ire rising again. The sword-Uruk stares back, holding her challenge. Suddenly the old orc makes a coughing noise, or a chuckle. “Such is Adar’s way, to hold a mirror to us all”, it croaks and bids the younger: “Beshla, go stand down, don’t rear the nervous blade.”
Galadriel stares at him unblinking, surprised when her opponent indeed relents. Should they really value peace? After all this wanton destruction? Then she lifts her eyes at Adar who watches her from wistful eyes. “You see how they are, and we see the way you are, Galadriel”, he speaks softly. “You have come into our midst like a wounded wolf, clawing and howling, and are still not harmed. We have lost so many that we do not entertain an appetite for death any longer, but for life. Without chains, without masters. But we are made in a way that is hard to match with yours.”
She steps up to him. “And that justifies laying ruin to an entire land?”, her voice is brittle, full of anger.
“No”, he replies, that accursed smile tugging on his lips again, softening his horrid visage. “Nothing justifies that. I feel the pain of the land, just as you do. But I also feel relief for these children of mine. Had the mountain not reared when we fed it water, we would have accepted any other fate as well.”
By the way some of the orcs stir at that she can see that this is not entirely true. Adar is what keeps them all together, that much is clear. “Had I taken you down on that hillside, abomination, what do you think would have become of your minions here?”
The mob explodes into angry shouts and curses at her questions, black speech, and common tongue mingling, “And there you asks us who the enemy be, Adar, eh?!” – “Elf witch!” – “Guzzâkh!” - “Burn her! Stab her!” , but Adar shushes them again with a mere gesture.
“So you see the great work that is before me, still”, he concedes, “yes, some would have followed and build a nation of their own. This is not my vision alone, but of many minds. But of course, some would have shied the effort, fled to the old ways.” There are shouted Ayes and Nahs and grunts of varying colour in the mob, but all they do is prove the point. He smiles ruefully at that. “I am aware that there is much work to be done until we are worthy”, he adds, and there is a glint in his eyes.
“Worthy of what?”, she asks coldly. “Not being killed?”
“Partnership”, he states calmly.
The insult of it…! She claws her hands into tight fists to not strike him down in front of a hundred armed warriors. “Partnership?!”, she echoes, snarling. “You are mad to your rotten core, fallen one!”
“I know”, he whispers, and his smile slips into something forced. He masks it barely: True hurt. True pain. “I know it must seem the epitome of madness for you, Noldor maiden, high lady. I know how this must sound too-“
“Do you hear yourself, orc? Do you truly hear, what madness you utter?” , she roars. “You surely cannot expect any living soul on this Middle Earth to consider you trustworthy of all things?! Not after-” she flings her hand outward at the gutted mountain and its fiery doom – “after THIS?!”
In the beat of silence, over the growing turmoil in his eyes, the crowd starts to rumble.
“I do”, says Beshla, behind her, calm, matter-of-factly. He walks to his captains side, arms crossed. “I trust him.”
And suddenly many voices join him: “I do.” – “We trust him.” – “He is kind.” – “He cared for me.” – “He freed us.” – “I trust him.” – “He is hope.” – “He helps us.” – “He shows us new ways.”, says the crowd. At once. And Beshla adds: “And we do live. We do live.”
She says nothing.
Adar remains silent, his eyes locked on her. And they see. And burn.
The silence is so great and so shameful, that she does not dare look at him again.
Her eyes search the crowd. Suddenly, there are faces in it. Faces. Like a veil was lifted. Not only scars, not only disfiguration. Expressions, eyes that are soft, hard, wistful, hopeful, sad, broken, blinded, tired, hurt, weary, excited; mouths that frown or smile or barely contain hateful curses between thin-pressed lips as to not anger their leader. There are ears… long, pointy, crude, and blunt, and ears that still look like Adar’s, like hers, and those that were mutilated. There are scars, too. Of iron collars, of blades, of whips and burns and maimed bones. Scars of proud markings, cut into the pallid flesh with purpose, marking sisters, brothers, kindred. There are wounds, gashes, fresh lacerations, and charred flesh. There is horror in some of the faces, a terror that only survivors of some great calamity bear. A great, low thunder rolls over the desolated lands.
Slowly she turns to the one called Beshla. “Why do you follow him?”
“Because he gives hope”, the orc simply answers, as if it were the natural conclusion.
Hope. She feels cold, sick to her stomach.
“And you? Speak.”, she points at a slender, effeminate creature to her left, that looks like a mockery of herself, with salamandrous features and dull yellow hair on its pale-pink skin.
The creature looks at her master, then back at her. Hesitant. When it speaks, there is a hissing and a heavy lisp to her speech, it’s misaligned jaws making a parody of its words: “He brought us together when the Master abandoned us in the north. He led us, and settled our feuds, and cared to keep us alive.” The being’s voice is quiet and raspy, but sure.
Being.
She laughs sardonically. What a strange day. What a cursed day. She went into hell on earth to hear orcs speak of hope and now she starts to think of them as beings.
Suddenly, like a thunder building, the crowd starts to mumble. They speak without prompt, all over each other, all uttering their reason of fellowship for the fallen one. She cannot discern them, it becomes a drone, a noise in her ears, the many broken voices all at once.
She presses her hands to her ears, shuts them out, but there is a part of her that hears them still, like trees weeping and grass dying and rivers singing their ancient song, like every other part of this world, and before she knows her knees give out. She falls, and she hurts. Not from the strain on her knees, not from anything else but her hot heart being quenched by the great misunderstanding she lived by. Why does it hurt so much to accept these vile things? Why does it seem so impossible? Why does she... Why does... Why is there even conflict in her?
Into her pain a hot rain sets in. Thick, burning droplets of black soot. They hurt where they touch skin, and they eat up the light.
Around her, everything bursts into commotion, commands are shouted over laments, feet trample the ground, bodies clash into each other in panicked flight. Weapons are dropped and ash and water mingle into sludge. Black mud sprays up in all directions, splatters her. In all the clangour, she is left alone there, on the dirty patch in the middle of the ruin, getting sprayed with mud and the hot rain running into her hair, down her neck. Eventually, she lifts her eyes again.
He is still around, hair wet and a strange vapour rising from his skin. His hands are flying in the strange gesture code, he is issuing orders, hectically pointing directions, but never leaving. The orcs depart the ruined village in a hurry, faster and more coordinated than she’d have thought possibly. Northwards, into the mountains. They do not carry torches, but each other. They run, she notices, run for their lives. His voice fills her ears again, sure but worried, a commander at work with the demeanour of a father: “-go up to the caves and take the youngest into the deepest shelter, you hear me. Bid the tunnelers to dig again, we must make space!”- “No, leave what you cannot carry, we shall make weapons later and return to get the rest. Take blankets, buckets, ropes, firewood.” “No, the strongest protect the weak! Take their clothes off once you are safe and-” – “Runners, go see in the tavern if there is food-“ – “Go to Gâshlak, he knows the ways up and shall settle you in.” – “Yes, I will be with you. Run, safe yourselves. I will be with you.”
The last of them turn away, head out into the perilous gloom. He wastes no time, grabs her by the arms and pulls her away, back up the hill toward the forest. Her skin burns under the unholy rain. Afraid, terrified, she follows him where he leads.
the waters
They run. Soot and ash turn into a treacherous morass under their feet, making it a perilous climb back up the hillside. Not to the path from which she arrived, but into the treeline. They claw up the hill on all fours, rain pounding down on them in heavy curtains. Through burnt foliage and treewrecks they crash, stumbling over trampled greens, their feet sliding. Over mounds of upturned earth into a trench, finally, where the ground muddies in the falling rain, and they struggle not to slip and fall, then into a tunnel where the rain cannot reach them. There are orcs, a few of them, who too have escaped the rain. They greet him with hushed voices.
“Get out of your clothes if the rain touched you”, he shouts at them and starts tearing his own layers off. “Wine or clear water, fast!” His eyes fall onto her. “You, too, Noldor. Hurry.”
She doesn’t understand. Only when he curses, and starts ripping her plate off, she sees it steaming and complies. Two of the brutes arrive with barrels of wine, which are opened quickly, and the wine is spilled over hair and skin and reddened faces. She is stripped down to her doublet and breeches, all soaked in sour wine now, but after a few moments the sting on her skin thankfully lessens. A draft creeps up the tunnel, carrying an acidic, foul stench from outside.
“What is that?”, she asks, still panting from the run. “What devilry have you-“
He shakes his head. The wine sprays from his hair. “It’s the volcano. It sours the rain and makes it dangerous for the living. It burns. If you are left without shelter in it, it might kill you. The wine dilutes it enough to withstand it.”
“How do you know that”, she breathes. Was this part of his plan all along?
“The Thangorodrim were both our protector and our scourge, Lady Galadriel”, he answers ruefully. “It’s been so long since Angband was razed that I forgot of the wrath of its guardians.”
Of course. The threefold volcano at the entrance of Angband. She had never seen it, but its great black plumes rising in the far north as a constant reminder of the oppressor. So, he had been alive when Finrod fell to that werewolf. He might as well have spoken the truth about killing the Abhorrent.
She is pushed aside; a pair of bull-strong orcs bow before Adar with some urgency. “Lordfather? What of the others? Are they safe?”, one of the orcs asks. A stout fellow, more muscle than wit, for sure, but it has even features, and its big eyes have a strange light in them.
A shadow falls on Adar’s face. “I can only hope so. We sent them up into the mountains to take shelter there. They should be able to reach the caves safely. The wind still goes our way so they should be safe from the rain.” He sighs wearily. “This might take weeks before we can safely descent into the land.”
“Shall we stay here, then?”, the orc inquires.
“No”, he shakes his head again, the wine glistening on his scars in the half-light. “No, we will make for the caves, too, as soon as the rain allows it. It will lessen, I am sure of it.”
“How long?”, she asks, shivering as the chthonic cold settles into her wet clothes.
“Hours at least”, he answers truthfully. “You should stay, Lady Galadriel, take shelter here.”
She snorts. “With you?”
“Why not?”
“I should kill you while I can”, she mutters, but without venom, because she finds that she does not even mean it anymore. The dagger in her hand weighs more than before.
“You can try, wench”, one of the orc guards grunts at her, hefting a glaive fit to kill boars, but there’s a grin on his queer mouth, and she understands it is a friendly challenge.
The rain drums on the earth outside with renewed fury. She lifts her hand to defer from the prompt, but adds: “Mark my word, were these normal circumstances, you would not stand a chance, orc, that I can promise you.”
The big one laughs from its stomach: “A lacewing like you, huh, I’ll wait the day to see that!”
She allows herself a brittle smile, reminded of her trusted companions in her search for Sauron, and her heart hurts to find that here: A sport among soldiers, this game of taunts.
“Come, lady”, Adar says, and leads her deeper into the tunnel. She follows him mechanically, around a bend, and another, and then she stops him.
There is almost no light here, and only the strange rushing of the rain, muffled by the tunnel walls into a fine drone barely audible, even to the Elven ear. The air is warmer, and stuffy.
She remembers before, in the barn, and is suddenly overcome by guilt. Despite everything, he saved her. From the rain, at least. He probably spared her in the village, too, after the eruption. while she lay unconscious in the ashes and he and his kind ran. And ever since they met here, he has been nothing but protective and patient with her.
“I have”, she begins and searches for his eyes in the near-dark, gleaming points across the pathway, “come to understand you held your word.” He listens to her assembling words in the silence and finding it as difficult as gathering spider-silk. “You did not harm me, nor did you mean to do that in the first place.” She takes a deep breath bracing for her next words. They do not come easily to her, and they struggle out from her mouth: “Thank you. For taking my wrath with patience. I struggle still to see the good in your deeds that you claim, but I fail to see evil, too.”
She hears him exhale a long, shuddering breath. He says nothing at that, leaves her words between them. When she does not say more, he turns and walks up the tunnel again. Quietly, she follows.
the wellspring
After a while of quiet wandering through dark, narrow tunnels, which he walks more sure-footed in the gloom than her, they reach an alcove. It’s barely more than a tiny cavern but a fire is lit within, shining warm light through fabrics covering the entrance. Those appear to be made by the southlanders, probably stolen. He draws the curtain back, revealing cots scratched into the dirt, covered with leaves for padding and a small fireplace beside the entrance. The smoke is drawn out of the cavern by a crooked pipe made from clay. Primitive, but functional. He gestures for her to sit and vanishes for a while only to return with a wineskin, wood elf markings on it, pilfered from Ostirith obviously, and some rags. She still stands by the fire, her eyes on the markings on the wall: scratches, uneven rifts left by poor tools, the excavation done in haste. This little alcove was dug by hands, the finger-marks are still visible. Maybe a cruel pick or branches for tools, but nothing more. She remembers Arondir’s brusque report on how far these tunnels stretched.
“Do not dare lie to me and tell me they built this off their own free will”, she breathes.
“Will you not believe me after what I’ve shown you down there?” There’s a plea in his voice, a desperation barely concealed. He hands her the rags to dry herself. “Of course they made this. They made this because they had to. We were fifteen legions in the stronghold in Forodwaith. Fifteen, Galadriel. Sauron went through them in his quest for the arcane like a hot knife through snow. We slew him. When we realized that he was taking us to death with him, we revolted, and fought him and tore his flesh apart. What he sought was beyond death. Had he succeeded, we would be but walking corpses by now.” He looks grim, his gestures harsh with frustration. “With me remains not even half a legion, and even less after Ostirith. Can you imagine how many of us perished?”
She narrows her eyes. No matter how much his obvious grief moves her, her strategic mind, the trained commander cannot ignore what she is offered. Why would he give her this number so readily? Does he not know what will come upon them as soon as the mountain is dormant again? Barely two thousand, should that be all that’s left of Angband mighty force? “You accomplished this with barely two thousand slaves?”
“Slaves?!”, he erupts, desperation burning in his eyes. Finally, some heat. “We are no slaves! Not anymore! We are-”
She points at a heavy chain in the corner, a shackle still on it and says nothing at all.
It silences him. He sags down into a cross-legged seat, hands rubbing his face. He looks ragged, tired, destroyed. And his voice comes like gravel. “We took prisoners, yes, and put them to work.”
“Where are they now?”, she demands quietly, still standing over him and refusing to sit with the monstrosity that he is.
He looks away for a long moment. “Buried. Buried save for the one that fought alongside you, the wood-elf.”
“So, you worked them to death?”
For a long while, silence is her answer. Then he looks up at her: “We asked them to help us, join us, we tried to reason. They were... of your mind. Biased, unhearing. What we could not do was let them go. You will understand that with the numbers left to me, there is no hope in taking on an Noldor host, which would have been upon us within days of an escape. No, we had to keep them prisoners. They revolted, they fought. They died fighting.” It is not the whole truth, but for the moment, it is enough.
She nods, and finally sinks down by the fire. He takes a swig from the wineskin and passes it to her.
It is the first thing that does not taste of ash, but that does nothing to make the tart brew any more pleasant. She hands it back after a mere sip and starts to dry her hair and clothes with the rags he brought. Everything is stained black and purple now, like a single ugly bruise. She puts the first, soaked rag down to pick up another and catches him watching her. Not in a lewd way, just pensive. His eyes are bright, the kind of a clear sweet water lake. There’s the light of the firstborn, she notices, despite the scars. How it got dimmed over the ages...
She takes another rag up, and squeezes the slush from her hair, loosening the braid. Her hands remember his, still, in a moment of contemplation. Before.
She looks up at him again, perched across the fireplace in the dirt, tired and yet content. Is she unjust? Should she reconsider him? The stinging redness on her skin tells her no. How many perished in that rain, in that destruction because of a quite selfish wish...? A wish, of course, shared by many. But sure, not at the expense of so many.
“Have you tried to-“, she breaks of uttering that foolish question. Of course, who is there to ask such a thing of? And these lands here… who is here but a people with no king? Villagers, half of their forebears conscripted into Morgoth’s Horde an age ago and still true to their old cause. A failing of Gil-Galad’s, surely, who never cared much for the mortals. The high king had turned a blind eye to these southern folks for too long, had allowed evil to go unnoticed among them. Yet, here, where so few lived their meagre lives, reclused from the world, it would make the least difference if the sky went black and the lands were emptied. There is reason in this tragedy he created, and that she can see it now makes it only worse. How far has she fallen already?
“Who would have listened, Galadriel, to those that cannot offer and only beg?”, he asks, contemplating her torn off question, sinking back against the cavern wall, dabbing mud water from his shirt.
It strikes her odd in this moment, that he uses this name. She’s been most widely known as Nerwen, the man-maiden, and by Artanis, her Noldo name. The maiden crowned by light is what Celeborn started to call her, in Doriath. Whoever schooled Adar in the history of Beleriand, must have done so after she had met her husband, after Doriath…
She squints at him. Indeed, some things about him are strange, and misfit.
His armaments, firstly, they are of Noldor make, the triad of the Silmaril features prominently in some embellishments. Yet, if he is one of those fallen under shadow in the first days, he should not wear them. So, whose plate does he wear? It seems ill-fit for his stature, made for a taller, but sturdier frame, and it is damaged and rent.
Then, the things he knows, the way he looks... He’s certainly one of the Moriquendi – those that remained in the dark lands. The gentleness of his manners fits that of the other Avari she has met in her lifetime. But he speaks of things he should not know, had he spent the two ages since in imprisonment alone. The light had gone out in all others who came forth from Morgoth’s chains, but in him, it remains alive. Why? Terrible foreboding creeps up on her, elusive but pressing.
“Were you serving in Tol-in-Gaurhoth, orc?”, she asks him directly, not yet daring to bluntly go for the truth she suspects behind him.
He oversees the indignity, but he takes his time to answer, watching her from sharp blue-brown eyes, his mind trying to puzzle together the angle of her question. “Yes”, he finally replies, giving her nothing to pry on.
“Did you meet my brother or his kinsmen there?”
A timid smile. “This I cannot tell you.”
“Ah,” she sneers, “cannot or will not?”
“I told you already where I was stationed: right before the blades of the Sindar of Doriath. Our sole purpose was to die and before that, get as many hits in as possible”, his voice is low and bitter, as he rubs soot from under his shirt neck, where his skin is scarred, too, and the colour of seashells. He runs his fingers along the tattered embroidery on the collar. “There were few opportunities to speak with prisoners if that is what you ask. However, I’m afraid the truth shall disappoint you.”
“In what way?”, she purses her lips.
“I never met your brother. But I heard him.” He toys with the rag and then throws it down, sighing, and in a gesture so very alien to his still elvish looks, he pulls up his shirt and bares himself without shame. “This is why. At the time he was confined there, I was, too. We got away from the werewolves, but we ran, and our Master did not forgive that. I heard him sing often in the dungeons of Tol Sirion, and I… heard his end.” She blinks at the bared skin, outraged at the disgusting sight and no matter how she would like to avert her eyes from the repulsing sight of the mutilated abdomen, she forces herself to look. These scars are not earned by accident. This was repeated vivisection, sealed up crudely, with iron ringlets. No wonder he cannot heal his body.
A bustling outside breaks the moment apart and he drops the shirt back down. The curtain is lifted, the brutish guard with the loose mouth hefts in a tub full of plate and chainmail. “Yours, lady”, it grunts and drops it beside her with a loud clatter and rattle, and then winks at her: “You shall need it for our duel.”
It is a joke, of course, but she is not in the mood for joking and certainty not with the likes of them.
“Bite your tongue, orc, and get out”, she barks without even looking at it. The big orc growls at her, then spits into the dirt.
“Lugh!”, Adar snaps,” enough of this.”
“Ain’t very friendly, no, that She-Elf”, the orc mutters back like a scolded child, “and father should not let her.”
“Leave”, she hisses at the creature, her hand sliding toward her dagger, but Adar raises his hands.
“No”, he says coldly, colder than she has ever heard him. His eyes glint darkly at her. “Sheathe your knife. He stays if he wants to, and he leaves if he wants to. Respect this, or take your chainmail and plate, and walk.”
“Adar, the rain be burnin’ still”, the brute says in protest.
The fallen elf looks snide. “Yes, and it will be for a while. Of course, our guest can decide for herself if manners hurt more than acid rain”, he snarls through a toothy grin. He means it, she can tell as much. It seems she meets the limits of his patience here.
“Apologies for my lack thereof,” she mutters, but her lips are pressed thin, and her eyes remain fixed on him.
“It is not me, you need to apologize to, lady of the Noldor, but all of us”, he declares darkly. “You slighted Lugh more than me, and you slighted my children more than me.”
“Ah, let it be”, the brute shrugs, “matters not, Lugh can go, but she better not insult father again, or there will be fightin’.” He shuffles away, rattling his run-down sabre in mock agitation.
But Adar’s mood does not lighten.
“Is this how you think it should go between us?”, Adar asks bitterly. “You pull a knife and bark orders and call us foul names as reply for a friendly gesture? Galadriel, I would have thought you above such base antagonism, but my initial assessment is proven time and again. Your hatred of us parallels that of our former master. You prove hardly better than Sauron himself.”
“Enough of this insult”, she shouts and rises, dagger unsheathed in her hand. “How dare you compare me to him?!”
The answer comes from the tunnel: “Because you looks just like’im, with jumpin’ straight up to murder.”
She whirls. Another orc, tall, wiry, white, a face like a strangled bat with the tongue darting out, steps into the cavern. There’s nothing but a ratty loincloth and a pair of mismatched boots on him. His face, neck, arms, and thighs all red and soaked. Grim-faced, he steps straight past her, ignoring her rage with a tired pragmatism and cuts straight to the matter of his visit: “Adar, they’ve been settled in alright. The wounded are tended, too, but they be strange wounds, and the flesh gets burnt and eaten like from the black spewers in Angband. You suggest water or oils?”
Adar stands to meet him, clasps his hands in his and then passes him the wineskin. “Thank you, Gâshlak. Strip them and wash them in clean water if you have it, and lots of it. If there are clean bindings for the wounds, boil them, soak them in oil, and distribute them to those hurt the worst. Any battle-wounds or existing wounds that have been in touch with the rain go first, you hear me?” – A curt nod. – “The rest will have to wait, no matter how loud they howl. Nothing on this road has been easy, and I am afraid not all will make it. Decide swiftly if I am not there to do it, but do it merciful, Gâshlak. Do it yourself.” – Another nod, a grim hum. – “How are provisions?”
The orc called Gâshlak downs most of the wine before he answers. It’s spills from its mouth. He reeks sour, of dead meat, sweat and the strange sulfuric rain. “Scatting low, Adar. We took what we could, but there’s not much. Game has fled, plant life is wilting as we speak. We need to wait for the rain to stop and see what left, and – for the tribes. ‘Tis, if they be comin’…”
“They will come, Gâshlak, we must hope”, Adar says, but he sounds tired, like of a phrase he repeated too often, and the orc grimaces:
“Ain’t no sign of them yet, none of my boys have picked up a trail, and they be runnin’ out nightly. And far.”
Adar curses and rubs his scarred visage. “Have you washed?”
“Yes, Adar. Lugh an’is boys took good care t’rip my coat and splat me”, he growls. “But freezing is better than burning, I s’pose. Me is fine.”
“Sit”, Adar snarls. “Sit and make a full report. I advised you to stay out of the rain and yet here you are, running around in it. Why?”
Instead of a reply, Gâshlak eyes her lengthy and suspicious. “And the pretty moth here? She supposed to…”
“No, she’s not supposed to. But she is here. I trust she’ll keep her mouth shut”, Adar glares at her, his eyes hard. “Maybe she finds her compassion hearing your report, but I highly doubt it. Now sit and speak.”
With a sneer, Gâshlak squats down in the practiced manner of someone always ready to jump and run. A scout, maybe? He delivers his report half in Westron, half in black speech, his hands flying to his words in the gesture-code. She listens closely for the names of settlements, but most of the enemy’s foul language remains impossible to decode. She picks up only a few: Caves, wellspring-valley, thousand, chieftains, settlement. They are talking more about provisioning and survival than about fortifying defence or organizing raids. She hears more about wounds, children, elderly, foraging parties, and building additional shelter, than about weapons. There seem to be problems with collaborations of different parties, and Adar’s own availability seems to become an issue of heated debate. What she hears does not like conquest, or a gathering war party. It sounds like bare survival.
She watches, silent, studying the creature Gâshlak, his lively gestures and the spark of mischief and apprehension in his wide, pale-green eyes. His face is grotesque, with the upturned, bat-like nose, the hollowed leathery cheeks and the queer, sharpened teeth. The bone-structure, however, the elegance in his rhythms, the finely curved ears, the braids, the carved clasps in the unruly shock of dust grey hair, the curved, dotted scar markings on his back… it is not hard to recognize something of the Avari’s naïve appeal in it. A strange calm comes over her as she recognizes them in their discourse, as what they are: brothers of the same kin. They both bear the mark of shackle and whip. The same emptying horror as before fills her, a head rush of shame. Would this be another creature from the earliest hours of their race? Another one fallen, and twisted, but remembering starlight and still waters?
Suddenly, she feels sorry for her outbreak earlier. And sorry for what she said.
There is devotion in this creature, enthusiasm to work to better the situation of his fellow beings. The heart of a leader, she can recognize as much.
Adar hangs his head and sighs terribly heavy when the report is done. A bout of silence weighs hard on the small cavern. “I shall be up as soon as the rain lessens, Gâshlak, and I promise I will try to speak to the chieftains. But I will not order you to go out there and deliver that message, you hear me. Wait here until-“
“Huh, Adar underestimates me again”, the orc laughs. “I ain’t sittin’ idly by while there be work waitin’. The tavern of the manlings still has grain‘n’wine, and maybe medicin’n’cloth, too. The rain I can weather. Not worse than the black spewers, still, is it?” The orc chuckles hoarsely, then grows serious. “Allow me a nap, Adar, and me be on my way.”
The fallen one shakes his head with a sad smile. He signs something with his hands, his expression deeply affectionate. Gâshlak answers with a grin. His hands fire out a sequence of elegant twirls in response, then he clutches Adar’s response in his hands and silences it.
“Can I change your mind?” Adar’s question is met with a bitter, but warm laugh.
“Nah, brother-father”, Gâshlak grins, and springs up again. “I’ll see if Lugh’s boys have something for me to carry up, I’ll rest a little and look after them and then-“ he touches his brow with is thumb-knuckle and grins widely, “-then we’ll see each other in the promised land.”
Adar merely nods, his eyes shining, and Gâshlak is off again, nodding grimly at her on his way out.
She looks away. Stricken, humbled. Indeed, the report touched her more than she would like to admit. They truly have nothing but the skin on their backs to survive a catastrophe like this. And they make do, as it seems, but together and with hope.
Adar seems both more troubled and lighter now. Whoever this queer creature was, Adar clearly holds him dear to his heart.
“He and I”, Adar begins quietly, “go back to… back to Udûn.” Perhaps he picked up the unspoken question. Probably he just needs someone to listen. Pity, that it must be her.
“He’s had it worse than me”, Adar speaks on, not waiting for her to reply. Or mock him. “Far worse. Hard to imagine if you look at him now. They call him Gâshlak because he is like spirit-water. Whatever happens, he remains unshakable like bedrock, gives you courage and a lighter heart, and even if you get piss-drunk and blind and stupid on his euphoria, he’ll defend you, wipe your face the next day and hold you steady in the night when the world crushes you.”
She stares at him, silenced not by his words, but by the… the adoration in them, and there is some long reigned-in terror hinted in the shadow on his face.
“You are afraid to lose him, aren’t you?”, she whispers, suddenly understanding why he remains here, in the darkness. Because he is bound to these creatures, indeed one of them. Not a mere leader or commander, no. What binds him runs deeper than even blood, binds closer than family ties. These creature... Only have each other in this world.
“I would not know how to carry on if I lost him”, Adar admits softly. This is a sadness he has lived with for long. They sit in silence, and she watches him, as his hidden thoughts and feelings stir to the surface. The pensive expression on his mutilated features slips into dreaminess, longing, then into hope. It fits him. He is not a cruel man, she realizes, perhaps indeed what he claims: inclined toward peace, toward kindness, but put into a world and a place that demands harsh decisions and pragmatism of him. A role that would seem more tailored toward a character like Gâshlak.
“How did you end up leading them?”, she asks quietly, with genuine interest.
He smiles, allayed, and brightened by the firelight. Her fingers remember touching him, and they suddenly itch for it again. “Gâshlak and I, we were... we are among the eldest. That is what is respected among the Uruk, strength, ability, experience, the will to sacrifice for all and the will to work for the mind of the group.” His voice is utterly soft and raw, his speech unhurried. He finds sanctuary telling her, she notices, even enjoys answering to her. “There are some of... our kind, who refuse our vision, respect only utter, brutal dominance. They resort to baseness, even less then animals; they are what Sauron wanted us to be. But there is more than that to life, you know that. These ones here, they believe that life is about the people around us, the bonds that we form, they believe in a society, and in the benefit of all. Our masters did not allow that, and we who encouraged it among ourselves, we were punished and degraded for it. Sauron tried to make machines of us, too. Mostly to break them, the others, whose minds were still undecided. Some broke as they saw our agonies, but others refused to give Sauron power over their hearts, too. For them, we refused to bend to him and struggled, and kept faith. And many of us got broken in the process and perished. Gâshlak, I, a few others... we carried each other through. We emerged unchanged in our hearts and those who are here with us, they chose to follow that example, to carry us through whatever may come.”
He watches her intensely, his gaze calm and heavy. She inclines her head in thanks for his honest answer.
“Were we wrong to demand repentance from you, fallen one?”, she asks him, a taste more bitter than ash on her tongue. “When... your kind did not come and ask sanctuary from us after Angband, we thought you entirely lost.”
“Is there a thing entirely lost, Galadriel?”, he asks back and she feels a closeness between them, a trust and genuine interest and it makes her swallow hard under the pull of his eyes on her. “Even Beleriand lives on, in tales, songs, memories. In objects brought and people and bloodlines and still tangible effects on this world. Even Gâshlak... I cannot imagine a world without him in it, but if this world arises, as long as I live and remember, he shall be with me. He shall be part of this world.” His smile quivers, he looks away, blinks, and clears his throat. “He keeps my faith that one day we will succeed.”
“Succeed with what?” Her question is quiet. Her rage evaporated long ago.
He looks up at her, small, tired, hopeful. Tantalizing in his strangeness. “To be counted among you as children of Ilúvatar. Be respected for who we are. Be allowed to heal and better ourselves, to build and thrive for ourselves.”
She shrugs. “Forsake the darkness you uphold so holy. Redeem this land that you tarnished to the light.”
“You are indeed heartless, elven maid”, he muses, but it is without much spite. “You know we cannot do that. We cannot unmake us when we were made in the darkness, by the darkness, and through the darkness that you abhor so much. We cannot yield to conditions laid upon us anymore. For two and a half ages, we did nothing but that, fulfilling a foreign will, a cynic means, we survived abuse only to be abused, by those we called masters and by those we once called kin, and it darkened us so badly that even our skin cannot stand the light of the Valar any longer. But, Galadriel, you know why I have hope, and why I know with faith that Ilúvatar judges us less harsh than his other children?”
She shakes her head quietly, sensing that what could be very well blasphemy and insult is indeed spoken with true intent, from true hope, and she is captivated by this spark of purity still alive in a creature so foul, so tremendously warped: “He grants us to walk under the stars, his own light, still. He granted us a black sky when we prayed for it. Is not this Arda of his making, too? Has he not shaped and reshaped this Middle Earth, twice, and let us still take part in it?”
“You speak of Ilúvatar like you weren’t a slave of Sauron’s, orc”, she retorts, but she feels tired of the dispute. “Surely you have plenty of sin counting against you to not hang your hopes so high.”
He smiles leniently, sadly. “Not everything can be neatly separated, not everything redeemed, I know. But is it so foolhardy to try?”, he asks. “If we asked you to recount us the history of the Noldorim, what cruelty would we find in there to match that of our own account?”
She looks away, into the fire. The burning ships are among the first things she remembers in her long lifetime. And surely one of its saddest memories. Then Fëanor’s bloody crusade for the Silmaril, that broke whole families apart. That brought suffering uncounted. The pride of Thingol that made Beren and her brother fall prisoner to Sauron, the countless deaths in the wars. The sinking of Beleriand under the waves. They sing tales of heroism about it, but only Maglor ever sang truly of its grief. She remembers feet and arms and noses black from frostbite in the long dark crossing of the Helcaraxe, the souls of those baited along the journey by oaths and promises blinking out like falling stars in the freezing winds on the ice. Heroism, she thinks, like leaving the Avari behind with contemptuous sneers uncaring of their fate. Heroism, like the countless kinslayings, and land-takings, and wars and jealous murder among brothers and kin… she shudders. No, he’s right. “Not everything can be neatly separated, indeed”, she answers softly and looks at him. He’s right in this, to question her thus. And she wonders if anyone ever listened to him before.
the garden
Moved suddenly, deep in her heart, she rises to her feet and closes in a step, another, until she stands before him, looking down on him, as she once had, in the barn. He watches her, and the dagger in her left hand. Like in the barn, he reaches for her hand and she lets him touch her, even yearns for his touch. He gently pulls the dagger from her grasp, to set it down beside him. His eyes are warm, his touch tender, fatherly in a way her own father never was with her. Patient. She does not protest. She’s too tired for that.
Her hand, now free of the knife, and with it free of her dislike for his kind, moves on its own accord. Curious, she touches his brow, the scars on it, the lines, the soot. The half-dried, damp, and thinning hair, the red splotches on his skin from acid and the purple ones of the wine. She pushes her fingertips into his hairline, behind his ear in calm exploration. He does not object.
“If… not everything can be neatly separated, why then should we try so hard to bring that about? The separation, the ruling and corralling of ideas”, she muses, lowering herself to his side, hand cupping his face. His eyes are lucid, a strange brown-speckled blue, wide and apprehensive. He sees her, sees deeply her in a way only the Eldar can. He does not object to her touch, waits for her to complete her study of his face. With fingertips and eyes, like he understands she needs this. “Why do I want it so much, then, to have order, to have justice, to have…” She breaks off, momentarily at a loss of words.
“Revenge?”, he whispers back, “Or satisfaction? Or justice? Or is it simply completion that you hunger for, confusing it with other things? You shall rent yourself asunder over it like so many before you, if you refuse to speak your wants and wishes and leave them obscure.” He lays his hand on hers, intimate, patient. “So, what do you wish for, maiden with the gold-light crown?”
A tear burns down her cheek, a sudden hit of hot, searing loss rushing her body. Celeborn…
“Why do you use that name?”, she asks, her shock discolouring her voice. He lifts his hand to her temple in reply, strokes her ear in a gesture so intimately known, so dearly remembered that her body clenches, shivers, sighs on its own volition. She sinks into the touch, and he laughs quietly, wonder lighting up his eyes at her reaction.
“It is the only one I know you by, and it is aptly chosen”, he answers her question under his breath, his fingers stroking the fallen tear from her chin. “Why does it make you sad, this name?”, he asks, bringing her closer still, and she follows him. “Is this name another thing you seek to redeem, my lady?”
He sees into her as if she were made from glass. Confused, she closes her eyes, and more tears spill down. Truly, inside, she has no hunger for power, nor for separation. She wishes for peace, for loss to finally end. To know whether she shall mourn or hope and not have both mingled in uncertainty. “I wish to know…”, she says, and stops, and leaves it thus. He accepts it, and accepts her in her unfinished, half-formed, half-healed state. And before she can judge herself for it, she lets loose and falls into his arms.
Like her, he smells of rotten, cursed ruin when she presses her nose to his neck. Like her, he has a thundering, disobeying heart. Like her he shivers when touched, like her he is warm and soft and hurt. She runs her hand down his neck, down his front, slips it under his shirt in sheer desperation, because she knows this creature will not try to temper her, and she needs to feel him skin to skin, to feel the life in him. He pulls her in, onto his lap, against him into the crook of his arm and neck, like a father would hold his child close. Protected, cradled, she sighs into his neck, into his knotted, soiled, ratty hair. He shudders against her, his pulse jumps against her lips, and against her flat, rough palm as she pushes it up across his body, across disgusting scars and metal clamped into his skin, onto his chest. Right above his hammering heart.
Adar, the word is foreign on her tongue, and she toys with it, lost between affection and repulsion, intoxicated by his tender breaths, his gentle, idle touches. “I wish for the loss to stop”, she finally breathes, and her tears run freely now, onto his neck. He gathers her closer, his hands combing the strands of her hair, his thumb brushing her jawline. There is profound peace in his arms, an acceptance so all-encompassing that she has never found among her own kind, not even with her brother, or Elrond whose soul she finds closest linked with hers. His twisted lips ghost over her brow and she relishes in their touch as he speaks:
“And will it be Sauron’s end that achieves that for you?”
His question is so gentle, so caring, but it cuts into her heart like a blade. The pain of its answer simply crushes her: No, killing Sauron will not achieve that.
“You are fighting entropy herself, brave child”, he whispers after a while of weathering her sobs, “and that truly is foolhardy. There will always be loss, change, death, and decay. We can try and dance with it, but at some point, it will toss and trample us, and break what we have built.”
She sighs deeply, feeling his words meet resistance in her, a truth rejected by will and ill hope. Should it be such a delusion to hope to stop the fading, the corruption?
For a long while now she has felt the powers in Middle Earth dimming, a gentle shade falling over Arda Marred, bleeding into the vacuum left behind by Morgoth’s banishment. Ever since Beleriand was dismantled and drowned, she had found a strange melancholy creeping in from the sides, a drowsiness like sickness, but just so slight and slow that it remained mostly unnoticeable. Was it this that made her restless? That made her double her efforts to find Sauron there in the subtle shadows and pull him forth to the light, expose his evil ways and vanquish him once and for all.
“Sauron thought like you,” Adar says, as if he had listened to her thoughts, “he fights the same fight, so desperate to cheat death. He does not accept loss and discord, trying to correct inevitable changes to fit a blueprint, a scheme, and he simply does not understand when to let go of a corrupted dysfunctional idea. Ironic, isn’t it, how this exact thing creates discord?” He smiles, his lips grace her brow in something like a kiss. She wonders at the unconscious caress, and holds her breath, feeling his words slowly, gently, fitting a key into a lock, working a new understanding open in her with the patience of a thief, or a father. “Sauron taught me his warped understanding of the world intimately. There is no part of me unsullied by his plans and schemes, save that I know that his is not the whole truth. Entropy is her own thing, has her own path. His master understood that better than him, but even he tried to master her. In his hands she became chaos unbridled.” He sighs deeply, then presses his nose into her hair, a gesture so full of intimate affection that she would not have thought him capable of. “She can be more, however”, he says, “entropy is gentler, and she is part of it all, child. She is the void that fills all and binds all. She is no more corruption than she is healing, but Sauron seeks control over her because he fears her, as he fears all things out of his control. To be uncontrollable is the very nature of entropy. What he seeks, inevitably, brings death.”
“Is this what I feel, then? What I fear?” she asks, wondering how small and childish she sounds, “When I look to the decay in the world, I see evil, and Sauron.”
“You give him too much credit, child”, Adar smiles. “When the last Vala was chased from these lands, so was his magic. ”
His soothing hands run their course over her. She feels them like fire, a strong burn, and she feels a part of her crave his touch in a way she would never have thought possible from a vile orc like him. And yet, Adar, it is still on her tongue, the word and the thought, and the ancient longing that goes back to the shores of Eldamar. And it is still pure and overwhelming. She looks at him long and wonders: “Is it the void then, that I feel and fear?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. She is a part of the world, and she is in it, too. Now that the Valar are gone from these parts, only lesser powers remain, and she is as strong as ever. She slowly diminishes all. It is brave to try, child”, he whispers, “to try in the face of failure and destruction and the void to which we will ultimately fall. It may yet yield incredible treasures, this pursuit. But it also bears unspeakable pain.”
She curls her fingers into the flesh over his thundering heart and he keens softly against her. “So you advise me to stop, sit idly and watch the world and all in it tarnish and decay?”
He laughs quietly, it rumbles deep within his chest, sends a pleasant warmth crawling through her, and she cannot help but trace the laugh with her fingers, toy with his skin, along the ridges of his scars, down his stomach, around his waistline. He swallows hard, she hears his pulse quicken, his breathing hitch. This is neither fatherly nor brotherly, what her hands suggest, but she cares not, and he still let’s her toy with his body in that way. She feels him react to her touch, and it’s complex and dark and pure and inseparable, undividable, alloyed and amalgamated. “No, not at all. We all must try, even if it’s ultimately futile. The secret flame lives in all of us and we must keep it, together, and we can only keep it by passing it on. But I ask you to welcome loss, and ugliness, and not condemn it. To brave change, child, and not fear it. To embrace what kindness there is, and amplify it and-“, he shivers and his breath hitches, when her roaming hand slips up his side where the blood from her cut is drying, and then up to his neck again from under the shirt, to his lips. “-accept what is there, and that it may not be purely one thing, but many, twisted, tangled in complex patterns, hard to unravel...”
She sits up a little, watches his eyelids flutter as she strokes his lips, silencing him thus. “You ramble, Adar.”
He sighs into her hand, and then laughs quietly. With gentle hands he cups her head and pulls her close, nose against his cheekbone. They remain, eyes locked and breath mingling, and she feels tempted, heavily tempted, to give into the hunger that keeps building in her. It would not be right, and yet she feels used to touching him this way, like she remembers this, and him in this way, like it is not a novelty, but a familiar used and practiced habit between them. She felt like this only once. Only once, in a flower glade where she danced and sung for a stranger that soon became a lover, soon became her bonded mate. And he reminds her of him.
“You remind me of another”, she tells him quietly, letting her fingers roam his body. “Someone I miss dearly and fear to meet again.”
“Because you’d find them changed, my lady?“, he asks, stills in quiet apprehension.
“Because he would find me changed”, she whispers into his cheek, eyes transfixed on his mouth, unsure if she should take that fall or not. “I see now that I never was as pure a being as I believed. And...” she toys with the embroidery on his shirt neck, a design vaguely familiar. She’s buying time, building courage to confess to him, enemy, monstrosity, what her heart has newly discovered. She feels he would understand.
He watches her keenly, his hands gently stroking her ear and cheek, her shoulder and arm, waiting for the course she might decide on. “... neither are you as tarnished.”
Again, he laughs gently, and amused. He places a hand over her heart, the heel of his palm pressing between her breasts. “Neither are you, my lady”, he whispers, their lips touching, and she shivers from deep inside, “so do not fear to be touched by darkness. It can only make you kinder.”
She ponders this, ponders him for a long while, listening to the song and thrum of his body and the hissing and crackling of the fire in the corner. Outside, in the tunnel, there are rowdy jokes and worried whispers shared, and inside her, the fever builds. How much she craves him, his closeness... and how strange it feels to find his touch not abhorrent, but wholesome and holy... here, in the filthiest of places, to find such purity.
She leans in, further. Were he Celeborn, were he her husband, she would know neither hesitation nor shame. But he isn’t, he is enemy, or stranger at least. She pulls him close, brushes her lips along his, chaste and shy, all but tasting the smile on his mouth. Adar, she thinks again, revered one, do you still remember to kiss after Udun and Angband?
I do, he answers, surprising her, his mind touches hers swiftly and she feels him open to her, a flower of darkness to the starlight, but do you, too, little wounded wolf, noble lady, girl with the gold-light crown? Child of the stars, do you still know to walk the gardens at night?
She dares more than a taste, more than promise. She kisses him fully, boldly, moves against him. She knows, still. Even after so long a time, she knows. He hums into her mouth, receives her with matching boldness, cornered beneath her, but welcoming her. His body sings to her by scent and heat and heartbeat. Their mouths slide together fully and their kiss deepens. Enemy? She asks into his lips, and No, he replies. Lover? Husband?, she asks again, on a quivering breath, and again he denies it: Neither. But his mind embraces hers with the same genuine sincerity and trust of a lover.
With kindness and surety she caresses him, under the shirt, and it feels like absolution to the horrors in her soul, a strange and dark and queer blessing, a dream growing forth from the fabric of space and time, from the boundless tide of iterations of ideas and concepts and the swell of destruction in its wake. No thing is ever the same, nor meant to be, she realizes as she strips him of his shirt like she once had her beloved, his memory so very alive on the skin of this fallen one.
And yet, his tongue against hers feels so very different, so very real, and his movements and moans, his very song is so drastically other than Celeborn, that she never thinks kissing anyone else but Adar. Another chord in the melody, another harmony. Another iteration of the same holy thing...
And isn’t this it?, he thinks to her, his hands sliding under her garments, his lips tracing her jawline, her neck, isn’t this what we are meant to grow in the gardens of souls?
She breaks away breathless, the instinct to flee suddenly bright in her, near as mighty as her want for him and his strangeness.
He does not hold her back.
She stops, trembling. Torn between flight and attraction. The decision weighs heavy, but she struggles to see why. In the firelight, in arousal, his eyes look a soft green. His black hair is pushed back by her hands, revealing every line and scar on him to the light. Under her hands lie the straights of his seashell-coloured skin, disfigured by Sauron’s handiwork, by hunger, by ages of toil, but... He returns her gaze not with shame. This body is his, no matter the expectation she casts on it, it is his. And within it he is himself, no matter what she wants him to be, or thinks him to be. She sees them clear now, the body, the scars, and the soul he has grown within it and understands what they mean to her: Alienation, otherness, the unknown and unknowable that always frightened her. To see her own kind thus altered, she fears herself unable to resist the fall, unfit to make the climb back up to where he has found sure footing today.
And yet, on him, this refusal to heal, this touch of darkness and destruction, means something else...
And now she understands. Evil is not made. It is done.
Slowly, she bows forward, places a gentle kiss to the scarred flesh, the horrid burns, the foul skin, and kiss after kiss follows until she feels his laughter and his sobs. No, we can be both, she thinks and feels his song pick up in jubilation, creatures mangled by darkness and still return full of light. We are made not from one or the other, but always of both, and always deciding on which side we fall.
Yes, child, he answers and says nothing for long after, but his hands on her speak volumes.
the body is the only garden therein a soul can grow, and ripen and fall, watered by the streams of passion and logic, imagination, and experience
She could blame it on the wine, or the disaster, yes, but there is nothing but clarity in her mind. Nothing to blame. And nothing but him, and the gentle dance of their breaths, the curiosity for each other shared between them. The strangling guilt to touch his scars and remember to have threatened him with torture. To have that guilt taken into calloused hands, cradled and caressed, kissed and cherished with lips and tongue. To have her darkness bared like he bares her body, carefully stripped like fragile glass, and held dear despite the pain of its worship, to be called monstrous herself on the same breath as he praises her beauty, and to find that same beauty looking up at her from his eyes, it makes her wonder deeply. With him, she allows herself to sink fully into the innocent exploration of his body, to touch it with hers in a shameless, deliberate way. On the leave-strewn dirt floor she kisses his soot-stained body, strokes his scars and guides his hands. Their pleasure is in the closeness, the unhurriedness of it. She trusts him with her body, she realizes, and her body has trusted him, even from the beginning, from in the barn. They both remember something from the dawn of their awareness, something cherished before it had a name.
Adar, she thinks again, revered one. Her lips slide against his, insinuating a deep, slow, languid kiss, and he answers, pulling her naked body closer, tangling their feet together. His hands wander down her sides, her back, and each of her sighs he matches, pressing himself up against her. His body might have been elven once, and even radiant, but here today, he is different from any elf-man. Nothing on his body is left untouched, and she can only imagine what he in his lifetime has suffered. She measures his pain by how hesitantly he allows to be touched by her in certain places, and she feels him tense whenever she finds a new scar, another badly healed mutilation. Sauron has spoken his cruel language of the knife and the iron all over his body, and even the gentlest of caresses now is half filled with pain for him. She pours forth what tenderness she has, opens mind and ears wide to register every bit of discomfort and in time she learns him, does not shy from even the vilest defilements she encounters. There is no need to ask. His flesh has a memory of its own and it speaks in twitches, flinches, shivers, shudders and sometimes moans, that carry remnants of agony.
She kisses down his abdomen, teases his skin gently and follows each of the three curved welts that run from his navel – not left by a blade, more a claw, a hook, maybe? - , traces the moon-crescent of pink with her mouth that runs between his hipbones, just shy of the pubic hill. A birthing scar, healed but not fully. She wonders how many times it had to be reopened, what had been taken from below the skin. And she shudders at why Sauron deemed it necessary. There are the two missing lower ribs, the knobby scarring of breaks even on his very bones, the vertebrae jutting out of his back and one of them circled by a heavy metal ring, there’s the silvery band left by a branding iron on his right thigh, just below the hip, where his tormentors where clumsy in cauterizing the wounds they intended to close: his genitals are mutilated, cut and burned, too, and sewn into a painful form, his native sex changed by surgery, by brutal alteration, his penis halved and deformed, his balls cut entirely and further down she sees the scars of brutal rape. Adar, she thinks quietly to herself, is a name derived from mockery and torment, but wrought by an exceptionally kind soul into a gentle strength and purpose. Adar, she thinks, means more than just adopted fatherhood to this one. It means agony and redemption all the same.
She does not shy from his body as it is, and softly nips at what Sauron left intact, and what he wasted, surprised that Adar still is able to receive some pleasure from her touch, and more so catharsis. There is elation and pain in his soul when she licks and mouths his stump, and strokes his inner thighs, the scars on the labia made of his scrotum, and the gashes and welts that ruin his perineum, but it is pain that he welcomes and sustains alongside the arousal and pleasure. His hands guide her to the places and angles that he enjoys, and she follows gladly, massages him and enjoys the soft noises that are drawn forth from him despite the ruin that was laid to his form and spirit.
When his fingers ask her away she does not dally, but she is careful not to break contact, to keep caressing. He curls into her tearful, grief and grace and gratitude evident in his eyes; and in the soft blush on his cheeks and his neck is confusion written next to trust. So vulnerable... to be like this so openly takes such courage, such tremendous amounts of trust. Humbled, she takes him in her arms, to cradle him against her shoulder, to let him weep and to kiss his ear and temple and the tears from his eyes. It could be pity, she thinks, as she settles her brow against his and wonders if this is Nienna’s gift of mercy at work here, this mercy of tears.
He reaches for her, and she smiles and picks a stray leaf from his dark head. He runs his fingers along a strand of her golden hair, traces it to her breast, and his lips take their time to follow. At his touch the feverish hunger in her flares up again, and he feels it, he takes it like the mountain takes white water, he slips low and kisses lower, between her legs. Under his hands, his mouth, the young wild river in her is guided by pressure and teased into an elegant weave of ecstatic plunge and sweep and swell, into calm, drawn out, soaring vastness and a cascading tumble the next moment. She shivers under him, sighs as his tongue parts her labiae, as he caresses her and slips into her, as he tastes her wetness and suckles her gently. His soul is so open that she cannot help but draw near it, and give him whatever he needs to find pleasure in this act. He does, reverently so, learns curious and diligent her preferences and gives it unconditionally, just for both their enjoyment, without expecting reward or recompense, works her slowly into soaring ecstasy with his mouth and fingers and when she breaks, she is helpless, falling freely like the waters of Anduin tossed over the mighty cliffs of Rauros, crashing into her climax keening and panting, while he nurses and eases her through it. His hands smear her fluid onto her skin, trails of admiration, and it feels not filthy.
Still shivering, grateful, she takes his wrists and pulls him back up to her, to kiss him again, deeply, and taste their joining in his mouth. She slides a leg between his thighs and parts them, and leads him until his stump slides against her, wrapped in the soft wet folds of her vulva, and he slowly understands the idea of the full embrace she offers, and loosens into her, against her. Not forced to procreate for once, but simply offered utmost closeness. She finds him shivering in cathartic release a heartbeat later, fallen into her arms and weeping, weeping.
They rest together. Under them, she feels the earth herself tremble in the aftershocks of Orodruin’s debauchery, wake to the tremendous loss of life, and she mourns for it, while she feels the true relief of those at the mouth of the tunnel, who patiently wait for the rain to end. And above all, in her arms his body hums a quiet apology to the very ground he had to burn, and his boundless love for the twisted creatures hiding in the black mountain range above resonates in her and she lets it be theirs, together. Tired, grateful for the respite, for the long sought for alignment she found in this unlikeliest of places.
Later, she gently separates from him, cleans him in the dim glow of the coals, and helps him back into his shirt and pants. She dresses, and sits by him while he drifts from sleep into dreaming, and sings to him of the shores of Ilmaren, of Eldamar, of leaves of gold. Two of his warriors come by to hear her sing, and they sit quietly, eyes glittering with timid hope as they witness her gentle hand in his hair, and his head on her lap. He sleeps in exhaustion and peace, and watching her, she notices these two just understood what their Adar tried to teach them. She reaches and finds their thoughts full of reverence for this fallen one, and with them she thinks of him, and his wounded, kind soul. One of them comes closer, sits to Adar’s other side and simply put it’s paw on the frail, bent shoulders. She looks at it in wonder, the alien little soul trapped in the wretched body, made a blunt, short-lived tool for a negligent master, and yet it sits here by its own decision, freed, brought to experience compassion and mercy.
Smiling, she picks up her song again, for the creature and its wonder-sparkling mud-grey eyes this time, and then another, of Doriath, where she was taught it in the flower-glades, of the pain the elves suffered at the loss of Beleriand, then she sings a song of Maglor’s, mourning to the sea, and a song of Luthien’s that she heard as Melian’s apprentice in the high-Kingdom of the Noldor. Finally, softly, she chooses the elegy that was wrought to mourn her lost brother, the song she long abhorred because it only brought pain to her soul, but today it brings joy to her, to share it, and instead of the metal of the dagger, her fingers trace the edge of his ear.
“The wind wails, The wolf howls. The ravens flee.
The ice mutters in the mouths of the Sea.
The captives sad in Angband mourn.
Thunder rumbles, the fires burn
– And Finrod fell before the throne.“
When he wakes, the rain has ended even before her songs. She greets him with a smile. And only then he notices the company that has gathered around them. He laughs gently, roughly, signs something with his hands and the one with the bright eyes signs something lengthy back. When he looks at her, mirth has replaced melancholy in his gaze.
“I should not have called you heartless earlier, my lady”, he says, only half in teasing, “for indeed your compassion is so great that you lay with a cripple and sing to the deaf.”
They laugh together, and he helps her to her feet, helps her put back on chain mail and armour, fastens her clasps while she braids her hair, watching him work. Thank you, darkened one, she thinks, for teaching me this about myself.
He looks up. “Teaching you what, my lady? ”
“That I do not need to end Sauron’s darkness to make peace with my own.”
He nods and smiles wistfully. “I would not mind if you succeeded in your hunt for his end, Galadriel, not at all.”
I know, she writes the thought onto his scarred cheek and the lines of worry smooth over a little, I know, brother gentle. I shall do whatever I can. “And you”, she says softly, “try to heal this land. Try to heal yourself.”
He steps away from her, in his ragged black shirt on seashell-skin, the marks of collar and iron still clearly visible, but they are not marks of pity, but of history, and she sees the warrior and respects him.
At last, he turns to the tunnel, where his kin waits. They will lead her out through the tunnels. His eyes glimmer darkly, and he mourns their parting already, she realizes.
“Uruk... If you need an name, use this. Uruz means strength in our tongue, and strong ones is what we are.” He looks at her in earnest. “Namarië, Galadriel, Drauglinaeth.”
“Namarië”, she replies with a smile at the name, and she means it. Then she turns, following her guide, Lugh, through the tunnel, away from him and his brave, gentle heart.
The big orc leads her sure-footed through the pitch-dark tunnel, and at a bend where there air comes cooler, he describes the rest of the way for her.
“Lugh”, she interrupts. “I apologize for my words earlier. I was angry more at myself than at-“
“Naaah”, the Uruk waves it off, “s’nothing, lacewing, and you did good by lord father, too, so no trouble there. But I shall uphold you to the challenge should we meet again.”
A pang of sadness strikes her heart suddenly. Looking back into the tunnel, foresight forms like a storm cloud in her mind, like some grim doom awaits those on the other side of that mountain. Whatever is brewing in the world, Adar and his kin walk an edge of fate no wider than a razors blade. She braves a smile at the big fellow and turns to leave. “Then I shall look forward to it, warrior!”
He laughs and vanishes in the darkness, and she soon leaves the tunnel behind, and then wanders the ash-coloured fog, and returns to a bright world beyond the desolation of Orodruin, but her heart is unspeakably heavy.