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No one bothers to shackle Maitimo. Why would they? He cannot harm one of the Ainur in any way that matters. He tried, more than once, and it never worked. He did not stop for fear of pain, for Maitimo has long since stopped caring about pain. It will come whether he fights or not.
No, Maitimo would rather conserve what energy he has. Whatever this is—it is new. Something has changed. He will need everything he can muster to face this new torment.
The room is an austere one. A long low table of polished pale granite, a chair on either side. A cabinet of some dark polished wood, firmly locked. Wall sconces glowing with cold white light. A golden fire burns in a grate and, instinctively, Maitimo turns his face toward it for the warmth.
He is pushed none too gently into one of the chairs by the thralls holding his arms. They are not rough out of malice. They simply do not care. Maitimo cannot blame them.
His back is to the door. He sits still, as straight as he can manage. He wishes he had some way to tie back his tangled hair. The area around his right eye is aching, throbbing. Maitimo fought back when he was about to be put into solitary confinement again and took a fist to the face. He thought he would lose his eye—but it healed enough for him to see again. The bone, though, is healing wrong.
The door opens behind him. Maitimo does not turn. He waits as his host glides around the table. An achingly beautiful face, a cascade of golden hair, eyes like knives.
"Well met, Your Majesty," the Maia says, sitting down like the chair is a throne. He sets a wooden box on the table. The box makes a thud surprisingly heavy for its small size. Golden hinges shine coldly in the white light.
"Þauron," Maitimo says.
He revels in the flicker of a scowl on Þauron's face. The Maia hates that name. But he gave up on trying to get Maitimo to stop when no amount of hot iron or solitude or any other torment could shut him up.
"You look well, Your Majesty," Þauron says. He eyes Maitimo, taking in the latest injury. "Ah, but I am mistaken. You have been mistreated."
"One of your lieutenants," Maitimo says. "I am disappointed."
He hates the new sound of his voice, rough and grating. But playing these word games with Þauron will stave off the inevitable for a little longer, so Maitimo plays. Besides...he has no other conversation here. Thralls will not speak to him. The orcs are sophisticated with each other, but never with him. At least Þauron can playact civility.
"They will be reprimanded severely, I assure you," Þauron says.
"I appreciate your courtesy," Maitimo says. "But what do you want of me, Þauron? I have nothing left to give you.”
Gracefully, Þauron opens the box. He pushes it across the table. Maitimo cannot hide his astonishment. Inside lies a small hoard of gems.
"It is not what you give me, but what I give you, O King.”
Once, Maitimo was a student of gems and stone. He had never been much interested in cutting gems or making jewelry—though he was proficient in that, of course. No, Maitimo was more interested in understanding minerals and their natural properties.
He knew each mineral that composed the stone his mother carved, and knew the rocks where his father could find any gem he desired. Maitimo had been the one to define the spinel law of crystal twinning. He had participated in the debates on the primordial nature of the native metals. He loved the artwork of the earth with all his being.
So Maitimo can be forgiven, maybe, for his reaction to the gems Þauron presents to him. For a moment he is not in Angband. He is in his own study in Tirion, safe and comfortable as he examines each gem in the box.
First: a diamond. About the size of his thumb, the gem is uncut. Slightly gray and transparent, it has a beautiful shine. Yet there is something odd about it, a tiny inclusion in the center of the crystal. Maitimo examines the diamond, turning it this way and that, watching the inclusion catch the light and flicker.
“Ice,” Þauron murmurs. Maitimo glances up, but asks for no clarification. He is certain Þauron wants the chance to show off his knowledge. Maitimo, no matter the pull of curiosity, will not give him the satisfaction.
The next crystal is one Maitimo does not dare to touch. It is immensely delicate. The cloudy white crystal rests on a small cushion. It looks like a three-dimensional feather, smaller faceted crystals fanning out from a central pillar. It bears the smell of ammonia when Maitimo leans close. This one he knows well: sal ammoniac, used in soldering and metal refining and cloth making. It is a well-beloved crystal among the Noldor.
Beside it rests a stunningly perfect hexagonal crystal, the delicate pink of a rose petal. Maitimo runs through the characteristics in his mind as he cradles it in his palm. Prismatic shape, vitreous luster, transparent, it could easily be either beryl or corundum. A diamond could scratch any crystal in this room. But the table is granite, so—Maitimo drags the crystal lightly along the edge. A tiny scratch is left behind. Not corundum, then. This is beryl, one of the softer varieties.
Maitimo is acutely aware of Þauron rising to his feet. He does not look up, but with his other senses he is aware that Þauron is going to the cabinet and looking through it. At the faint clink of metal on metal, Maitimo’s muscles tighten all at once. He only barely masters the urge to bolt for the door. Even if he makes it out of the room, he will not get far.
And it will be the worse for Maitimo if he incurs Þauron’s wrath.
Instead he sets the beryl down gently—he is sorry to have scratched it, and he will treat it better now. Maitimo carefully lifts up a book of black mica. It is the size of his palm, composed of hundreds of crystalline black sheets thinner than paper. There is a soft shimmer to it when he tilts it back and forth. Unlike the paler micas, this stone is not used in the cosmetics so popular in Tirion. Maitimo has always had a fondness for it, a mineral that cannot be cut to a gem, discarded in favor of its more useful cousins.
The last mineral is as bright yellow as a canary emerging from a coal mine singing. A mass of tiny joined crystals, it is uncannily cheerful in the cold room. It has no odor now, but if any water touched the crystal the smell would be unmistakable: brimstone. A shame that such brilliant color is so soft and brittle. It cannot be worn as jewelry.
Maitimo sets the brimstone crystal down in the box again. Regretfully, he closes the lid. He is unlikely to see such beauty again for a long time—if ever.
“Will you make me a crown?” Maitimo asks, raising his brows sardonically.
Þauron tilts his head. He sits down again, the cabinet doors conspicuously open behind him. Maitimo does not look. “If it would please you, Your Majesty. These are rare, you know. Not quite as rare as the Silmarils that the King of the World wears in his Iron Crown, but still. The ice diamond alone is evidence of the most ancient making of the world and the complexity of the fires below, the movements of the very continents…”
Þauron trails off for a long moment, his gaze distant. Maitimo remembers conversations with his mother, with his grandfather, discussing the creation of Arda in the deeps of time. How the rock far below is molten, ever moving, ever changing, as the world turns. How the heat and pressure create the gems the Noldor so prize. Þauron is one of the Ainur. He would have been there, when the Song caused those deep fires to ignite and the world to spin.
“Ah, you do not care for such sciences,” Þauron says abruptly. “Your father would have, but alas.”
In another time, Maitimo would have cared.
“He would have slain you the moment he saw you.” Maitimo holds out his hand, palm up. “Give me a knife and I will do the same.”
Þauron smiles. “You would slay my body, but not my spirit. You see, O King, we are all two parts of a whole. For you, the only one who really matters in this discussion, it is the hroä and fëa. If our hospitality should ever fatigue you too much, your blazing fëa might escape. Then your hroä, according to your great loremasters, must die.”
Must. Not will.
“Do you believe it will not die?” Maitimo asks. A frisson of real fear goes up his spine.
“It is a matter of study,” Þauron says. He watches Maitimo without blinking. “You are a perfect subject, Your Majesty.”
The next words come out half-pleading, as if for mercy. Maitimo cannot stop himself. “You have had plenty of other elves.”
“Not one of those who saw the light of the Two Trees,” Þauron murmurs. “Any others of your people have chosen death. You, though…no matter what agonies you face, you refuse to die. So I intend to study you, O King. You were born into the light of the Trees. What changes did that light make to your hroä? What knowledge might I glean from you?”
Maitimo’s breath is frozen in his throat. He cannot find a word to say. All that came before, solitude and broken bones and needles and knives—all of it could be endured—but this—
After a moment of silence, Þauron rises to his feet. At some invisible signal the thralls return. They drag Maitimo onto the table and begin to chain him down. He still does not fight. Whatever is coming will require all of his strength.
Þauron is still lecturing. Maitimo closes his eyes and thinks again of his mother. A long time ago, when a very young Maitimo learned that stone itself could melt in the earth’s fires, he had been terribly distressed.
But it will be destroyed!
Not at all. The stone can transform, you see, from one form to another. We have learned of that from the teachings of Aulë and our own study. When limestone sinks deep in the earth’s fires, it changes to marble.
Like your statues?
Yes. Marble is harder and stronger. It is more luminous, holding light. The stone is not destroyed. It is changed.
Let me be like stone, Maitimo prays. Let me be not destroyed, but changed. Made stronger by this ordeal.
He opens his eyes. His voice comes out hard as adamant, and he has a moment of pride. “What has all this to do with gems?”
Þauron begins to lay out tools and glassware on the table beside Maitimo. The slightly arrhythmic chiming against the granite makes Maitimo’s nerves sing with panic. “Your hroä is made of the stuff of the world. A few elements predominate, and these lie in mineral form in that box.”
Maitimo turns his head to look at the box. If his grandfather had not been Aulendur, taught the nature of the very substance of Arda by Aulë, Maitimo would not have believed it. But he does.
“Diamond, ice, sal ammoniac, beryl, black mica, brimstone…in the proper proportions,” Þauron says, and stops. “Ah, I nearly forgot. You must hold very still, Your Majesty.”
He holds a sealed flask up for Maitimo to see. A colorless liquid fills the flask. Maitimo does not deign to ask what it is.
Setting the flask uncomfortably close to Maitimo’s shoulder, Þauron explains: “An acid used to dissolve samples of stone for study. It is quite powerful. A few drops on the skin can eat away at bone and stop the heart. Do try not to knock it over.”
Maitimo holds as still as if he has been petrified.
“In the proper proportions,” Þauron resumes, resting a burning hot palm on Maitimo’s chest, “these crystals could be reshaped into you.”
With his other hand he takes up a pen. Delicately, he begins to make marks on Maitimo’s side. The tickle is so absurd and sudden that it makes Maitimo twitch involuntarily.
“What are you doing?” he asks. A blatant stall for time. But Þauron gracefully allows it.
“I intend to analyze your skin, first,” he says. “Discovering the presence of certain substances requires more than a simple touch. Your skin will contain a great deal of information.”
Þauron picks up a scalpel. Maitimo refuses to flinch. His heart is hammering against his ribs.
“You see, although we know that the Firstborn were made of the stuff of Arda, Ilúvatar has kept secret the exact process.” He smiles, cold and hard as a diamond. “Let us discover the truth together.”