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Chapter Text

It is already past noon when Pharazôn sends for her. Miriel knows it must be because the sun is streaming through the windows of her rooms on the south side of the palace. She can make out very little in the way of shapes or colours these days but she can still identify direct sunlight.  

You’re losing your touch, cousin, she thinks when she hears the heavy boots on the stairs. She had expected Elendil’s flight to be discovered several hours ago and half expected to find herself in chains by now. She is sitting in her private parlour when the guards arrive to fetch her and she rises to her feet before they can say a word. Her stomach clenches in fear but she is determined to master it. She raises her chin in what she hopes is an expression of defiance. 

“My Lady," one of the guards starts to say but she will not give him the satisfaction and cuts him off mid-sentence –   

“Yes. I know who has sent you, and why. Take me to him.” It is a small, almost petty thing, to ask to be taken to the King before they can tell her she is summoned, but it gives her some semblance of control. She does not merely have to acquiesce. She can still command. 

As she is led across the courtyard of Nimloth she can hear a commotion in the city below. Voices are shouting or crying out, horses are whinnying, there is a clanging of bells. She feels something soft touch her face and knows with utter certainty that the petals of the white tree are falling once again. 

“What is happening?” she asks the guards. 

“You shall find out soon enough” one says.    

They take her to the council chamber. It feels like such a little time to Miriel since she stood in this very chamber with Galadriel and Halbrand the Southlander, planning out their voyage to Middle Earth. Do not go, her father had told her. All that awaited her there was darkness. 

“Leave us.” It is Pharazôn’s voice. Miriel hears the guards withdraw and the door closes with a heavy thud behind them. Her heart hammers in her chest.  

Since her blinding, her cousin has tended to offer her his arm when she enters a room but not this time. He leaves her standing where the guards have deposited her, unable to judge where in the room she is. She supposes that keeping her disorientated is all part of his design. 

Pharazôn wastes no time getting to the point. “Where is Elendil, Miriel?” 

Miriel thought she had mastered herself but the sound of his name almost undoes all her good intentions straight away. Elendil, who has been her eyes since she lost her sight. Elendil, who was her one support after her father died. Elendil, who is so loyal to her that he was willing to lay down his life for it. Elendil, who not twelve hours ago was taking her apart with his mouth and his calloused fingers. Elendil, who is gone.  

The idea that she would ever give him up is preposterous. She takes a steadying breath and, keeping her voice low and level, says only “Gone. I know not whither.”

“I warn you cousin” – Pharazôn's tone is measured but there is a quiet menace beneath it – “this girlish infatuation will bring you nothing but sorrow.”

“If that is what you choose to call gratitude to a loyal subject of Numenor, so be it” she says.

A sharp exhale. She can picture his look of displeasure at her obstinacy. Her cousin can be careful, patient, strategic when he needs to be… but he does not like to be trifled with. 

“You are determined not to heed my warning, I see. So be it indeed” Pharazôn repeats, in a voice that makes Miriel’s stomach curdle with fear. 

“We have received information on how you bewitched the sea and survived the worm.” This time it is Belzagar who speaks and it makes Miriel start. She had not realised anyone but herself and the King was present. She collects herself quickly, but his words puzzle her.

“Then truly you know more than I," she answers, “for I cannot tell you what happened when I was beneath the waves” —

“Enough!” Pharazôn cuts her off, his temper showing at last. “Enough of this Miriel. Do not play the innocent with me. Do you take me for a fool? I know that Sauron the Abhorred was your collaborator.”

Miriel is bewildered. Collaborate with Sauron? It is absurd. She can scarcely comprehend the meaning of his words.

“I do not know of what you speak,” she says, her own voice rising. “Would you mock me thus, cousin, to suggest such a thing?” If this is a rumour that the King and Belzagar have cooked up to discredit her, then it is cruel indeed. 

There is silence for a long moment. Then Pharazôn says, as if musing to himself, “hmmnnn, if not his collaborator then perhaps his dupe.”

Before she can ask what he means, he continues, voice cold and cruel – “Your so-called Faithful are being rounded up as we speak.” 

So that was the meaning of the fracas she had heard from the courtyard. How has it already come to this? Miriel wonders. 

“What will you do to them?” she asks and hates how her voice quivers.

“Their leaders will be imprisoned, but fear not, they shall not be ill-treated. We are a civilised people. The common folk will be released if they are willing to swear fealty to their King.”

“And if they are not?”

“Then they shall be put to work.”

“As slaves?!” Miriel blanches in horror. 

“I would not use that word,” Pharazôn says. The faux-amiable tone is back. Miriel thinks she prefers his wrath. “As servants of Numenor.”

“And what will you do to me?” she asks. 

“You shall remain in the palace as my guest”

“As your prisoner you mean.”

“As you please” he says. “But you must understand, cousin, that you are too dangerous to exile. I cannot have you in Rómenna or Andunië stirring up a rebellion against me. Here in the palace I can keep an eye on your more…” – he chooses his words with care – “reactionary tendencies”

“Why do you not simply have me put to death?” she asks him bluntly.  

“Now cousin, what do you take me for!?” he replies. “I do not wish to harm you.” 

Maybe he does not want to risk making a martyr out of her, Miriel thinks. Or perhaps her survival in the sea trial really has shaken him, even with this latest show of strength. Perhaps he has concocted the rumour that she is allied with Sauron as much to convince himself as others. For all Pharazôn’s bluster about Numenor’s past and its future, she knows her cousin still believes in the power of the Valar. As children they had spent many a long summer’s evening playing at being explorers. Pharazôn would always play Eärendil, father of Elros Tar-Minyatur, waxing lyrical about the splendour of the Undying Lands and the halls of Valimar, where the greatest of all mariners had stood before the throne of Manwë and prayed in aid of Middle Earth. Even as a girl Miriel would find herself bewitched by the romance of it all. She suspects Pharazôn was too. Now, her childish wonder has grown into a quiet steady faith and his has curdled into fear and resentment. Oh yes, Pharazôn believes in the power of the Valar alright, and he hates them for it. 

****

Upon returning to her chambers, Miriel finds they have been ransacked. She almost trips over some heavy object lying on the floor when she enters. Nothing is where she left it. No doubt the guards were instructed to search the place while she was with the King for anything that might offer a clue to Elendil’s whereabouts. Her personal effects are strewn about haphazardly and her carefully curated system for locating what she needs without sight is altogether spoiled. She gropes to find a chair and sinks into it, her head in her hands. She feels suddenly utterly alone. 

At length she feels a gentle hand on her shoulder. “My Lady,” it is the voice of her maid Zamîn. “Let me help you tidy up a bit. Perhaps I can describe things to you and you can tell me where they are meant to go.”

Miriel feels a rush of gratitude towards the young woman by her side. She clasps the hand on her shoulder in both her own. 

“Whatever chance it was that led you to serve me Zamîn, I am truly grateful for it,” she tells her and then, quieter and more earnest, “thank you.” 

They work together for several hours, exchanging only such words as are needed to restore Miriel’s rooms to some semblance of order. It soothes her, both the methodical process of tidying her belongings away, and the unlooked-for kindness from her young attendant. When at last she retires, Miriel dreams of the Wave, and of Elendil in the bow of a great ship with a white jewel upon his brow. 

****

The weeks grow tedious indeed, confined to her rooms. She plays the harp, mostly for something to do. So many pastimes are lost to her now without her sight. She has not played since before she became Queen Regent, but she finds that the melodies of her youth come back to her with a little practice. The songs are as beautiful to her as they are sad. Sometimes she sings to herself too – of Valinor before the light of the Two Trees was dimmed, of the terrible oath of Feanor and the loss of the great Silmarils, of Luthien Tinuviel and Beren One-Hand, and the fall of Nargothrond and Gondolin. 

She knows she should be making plans, resisting her fate, doing something … but she feels so very powerless. Zamîn is her main consolation. She sometimes sits with Miriel for hours at a time, long after her work is done, just to keep her company. She describes her favourite gowns to her as she helps her dress, even though no one but Zamîn herself, and perhaps an occasional guard, will see her in them. She reads to her – books of Numenorian history, botany, and astronomy. Miriel drinks in the words like they are water and she is dying of thirst. 

One evening, as they sit together after the fire has burnt down in the grate and the parlour has grown chilly, Zamîn says, somewhat haltingly, “My Lady, I have a brother in Rómenna.” 

Miriel thinks she sounds almost nervous. She wonders at first why Zamîn is telling her this at all, but the girl has been a dear companion and she realises with a small stab of shame that she knows precious little about her, so she replies “tell me about him.”

Zamîn tells her about her brother, four years her senior. They are close. She goes to visit him when she has leave of absence from her duties. He works at the docks... Slowly a suspicion starts to dawn on Miriel why Zamîn might have mentioned him. It is confirmed when the young woman lowers her voice to a whisper and says “My Lady, he could help to get a message to the Captain.” 

Miriel’s heart stutters, hope and fear warring within her. It would be a terrible risk, but oh how desperately she wishes to get word to Elendil. She aches with it. 

“Your brother, he is… faithful?” she whispers back to Zamîn. 

“Yes my Lady.”

It could all be a trap of course. Zamîn has been kind to her for sure, but she does not know who else might have leaned on the girl for information. But something in her voice, and especially the way she had given Elendil his proper rank, persuades Miriel to trust her. 

“We would have to be careful…” she muses. And then, “would you go to my chamber? There is a book on the shelf above the fireplace bound in red leather. It contains all the Tengwar characters and shows how they correspond with characters in the common script. I used to use it for my lessons long ago, but it will serve us well now.” 

Zamîn fetches the book. It is a slow and painstaking process but, keeping her voice as low as she can, Miriel carefully dictates a letter. She has to go character by character, for Zamîn is unfamiliar with the Tengwar script and does not speak or read the ancient tongue. At length, however, the letter is complete. It is short and to the point. She is imprisoned but has not been harmed. Pharazôn is aware of his flight but does not yet know whither he is gone. She does not mention the imprisonment of the faithful, nor the strange rumour of her supposed collaboration with Sauron. It would take very little, she thinks, to bring him back to her side once more and thence to certain death. 

She signs the letter with a blessing and a wish for his good fortune. I Melain berio le. Ná Elbereth veria le. 

Until we meet again, she does not add. 

Miriel tells Zamîn she may have a week’s leave of absence. After all she has done for her, the least she can do is to allow her attendant to spend some time with her brother.

She promises herself silently this will be the only letter. She will not risk another.

Chapter Text

There is no sound but for the rustle of the wind in the branches above and the occasional screech of an owl. The pine needles blanketing the ground serve to deaden the noise of his horse’s hooves. The moon is high in the sky and almost at the full, its light slanting through the trees and forming silver pools on the forest floor below. The night is cool, with a damp bite to the air that signals winter is on its way. 

It is almost three weeks since Elendil set out from Armenalos and a weary journey it has been. First he headed south down the river Siril to keep as far as possible from the main westward road skirting the northern flank of the Meneltarma. He has travelled only by night, crossing the wide plains of the Mittalmar and the rolling hills of Emerië during the week of the new moon, when the darkness was most complete, and fording the Nunduinë east of Lake Nísinen. Now the moon is a waxing gibbous but he has made it to the pine forests of Andustar, where it is easier to travel without being detected.  

He could use a bath, a change of clothes, a warm fire and a good breakfast. Each night he rides and day he spends hiding among rocky outcrops or dense thickets, he feels less like the former Captain of the Sea Guard and heir to the lordship of Andunië and more like the petty fugitive that the King believes him to be. The key to holding back the tide, Miriel had called him but he feels altogether unequal to the task. 

Miriel. His heart constricts at the thought of her, alone in Pharazôn’s court. Many a time he has second-guessed his decision to leave her, but he knows she is right and that there is more at stake than their own lives and happiness. Still every mile that he travels away from her lies heavy upon him and part of him wants nothing more than to return to her side and damn the consequences. 

His dour state of mind is not helped by the fact that he is uncertain of the welcome he will receive if he can reach his father’s house in safety. It is years since he left Andunië to serve in Tar-Palantir’s guard and he has not returned once to visit Amandil. When the former King was deposed and locked away in the tower, Elendil had quietly grieved for him and for what it meant for the kingdom, but he had taken no stand against it. He wonders whether he would have found it within himself to walk the path of the Faithful at all without Miriel walking it by his side. 

It was Anárion, still little more than a boy at the time, who had shown solidarity with the old King. He had decided then and there that he would not follow his father into the Sea Guard, packed up his things and returned to his grandfather’s house in the West. Isildur had taken the parting very hard. Now Elendil must throw himself on his father’s mercy after his long absence. And he must tell his younger son that his brother is lost, when the pain of that loss is still so raw within him that he can barely bring himself to think on it, let alone speak of it, lest he break down altogether. 

****

Another three nights and he is within sight of the walls of Andunië and even in his dark state of mind the wind off the western sea as he descends towards the city stirs something ancient and yearning within him. 

He arrives at the gate of his father’s house just as the sun is rising. The guard looks him up and down with a mixture of bewilderment and awe. 

“I shall go and fetch your father, my Lord” he says quickly. 

At length his father emerges from the house. He looks older than Elendil remembers him. It is no surprise, since he is already past his 190th year. His hair is now snowy white but he is tall and lordly yet, clad in a sea green tunic and cloak after the fashion of the elves. He surveys his son with an inscrutable expression.

“Elendil.” His father inclines his head slightly. “You had better come in.” 

The house itself is ancient, but full of light. It is said that elvish craftsmen helped with the design. Amandil leads his son through the courtyard and the great hall and out onto a terrace overlooking the gardens. He gestures for him to be seated just as Anárion emerges, breathless, from within. 

“So it is true,” Amandil says. “Messengers from Armenalos were in the city five days since. They said you had fled arrest for high treason.”

“I did not believe it until now. Didn't think you had the spine for it,” says Anárion, the bitterness clear in his voice. 

“Now, now my lad” says Amandil peaceably. “We each of us wax and wane in faith as we chart our course through life.” Then, turning back to Elendil, “can we trust that you are charting your course true now my son?” 

Elendil nods. He has not yet spoken a word. He wonders absently how his voice will sound after weeks of speaking to no one, but mostly he fears opening his mouth because he knows that when he does so, sooner or later he will have to tell them about Isildur. 

“So tell us, what was your crime?” Amandil asks. 

“Pharazôn has usurped the sceptre from Tar-Miriel,” Elendil says. His voice sounds rough from disuse in his own ears. “I refused to swear fealty to him.” 

Amandil nods slowly, pondering. “We heard she had been blinded, and that her cousin had ascended to the throne. A sorry tale indeed. Her father was a good man.”

“And what of my clever sister and wayward brother?” Anárion asks at length. 

Elendil opens his mouth to answer but all that comes out is a sob. And then suddenly his body is wracked with them, all the grief he has carried with him for months finally spilling over. Through his tears he sees a dawning look of horror on his son’s face. 

He has been in this situation once already and he failed utterly. He had not even spoken the words to Eärien. Like a coward he had let Valandil break the news to her. This time, he is determined to do better. He kneels before Anárion and takes both his son’s hands in his. 

“I am sorry,” he tells him. “I am so sorry my son.” 

****

He has been settled into his new life for a few weeks, though he still feels restless and a little unmoored. Though it is rather unorthodox, he asks his father to put him to work. He must have something to do and they are not sure yet if it is safe for him to be seen abroad in the city. He spends his days training in the courtyard – for his sword arm is out of practice since he was stripped of his rank – or tending the garden, or poring over old maps of Middle Earth in his father’s library. In the evenings he and Amandil take counsel together and begin to make plans. 

He and his son have reached something of an understanding. Anárion often wants to speak to him of Isildur and, mindful of how he failed Eärien in the same situation, Elendil forces himself to answer. 

He tells him that Isildur volunteered to serve in Middle Earth, and made no complaint when he assigned him the lowliest rank on the ship. He tells him that his sister did not want him to go. And, though it feels like there are glass shards in his throat as he tries to form the words, he tells him about the eruption of Orodruin, and how the sky was blackened with ash and streaked with flame. How he never saw Isildur again after that. 

He is rewarded for his honesty with Anárion’s gradual, grudging respect. 

Then, one day a servant finds him as he is digging over a vegetable patch. “My Lord, there is a letter for you.”

The letter is like none he has ever received before. The Tengwar characters are clumsy and ill-formed but he can just about make them out. His eyes alight on the name, Miriel, and his heart skips a beat. How has she managed it? With as much haste as he can he pieces the words together. In the common tongue it reads –

Dearest, 

I trust and hope this letter reaches you safely. I cannot write at length and you must not seek to answer. I send this by way of my attendant Zamîn, if you remember her? She tells me her brother can ensure its safe passage from Rómenna. She has been a great consolation these past weeks.

Your flight is discovered, as we expected, but Pharazôn knows not whither you are gone. I think I can keep it from him for a good while yet. He has me under guard in the palace, but no harm has been done to me. I am safe and I pray nightly that you are too.  

May the Valar keep you and Elbereth protect you. 

Yours ever, 

Miriel. 

“Who is the woman?” It is Anárion and he speaks in a teasing tone. Elendil starts almost guiltily. He feels the blood rising to his cheeks. 

His son laughs then. 

“Well? It is from a woman is it not? I have not seen you like this since Mother died. You never did have a face for cards Father, and right now that blush of yours tells me you are in love.”

Elendil collects himself. “It is from the Queen,” he says. 

Anárion looks surprised. “From Tar-Miriel? Well that is unlooked for. Not a love affair after all then. Take care though, Father. Is she not entirely under the King’s thumb? She never lifted a finger to help the Faithful when her father was still alive.”

“You do not know of what you speak” says Elendil, voice low and dangerous.

“Tar-Miriel has governed our kingdom faithfully these many years, all while under the watchful eyes of her cousin and his faction, waiting all that time for a moment of weakness to pounce on her. She allied herself with the Lady Galadriel, at great personal risk, and led our people to the aid of the men of Middle Earth. She walked into a burning building to try to save Isildur…” Here his voice cracks but he pushes on. “It was in trying to save your brother that she was blinded Anárion. And when I was to be thrown to the sea worm and was facing almost certain death, she willingly walked into waves to face the Valar’s judgment in my stead. I owe her my life, as well as my loyalty.”  

Anárion raises his eyebrows at this outburst and holds up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. 

“Alright, alright,” he says mildly. “I see I was wrong about Tar-Miriel’s character. It sounds like she is made of stronger stuff than I realised.” 

Then, continuing with a glint of mischief in his eye, “I was right about one thing though… You are certainly in love with her.” 

Chapter Text

She sends more letters. 

After Zamîn departs with the first one she finds herself on edge the whole week that her maid is away, pacing back and forth in her rooms, dwelling on every conceivable way that their gamble might go awry. The relief when she returns is palpable and when Zamîn whispers to her “it is done,” Miriel feels a rush of exaltation. They have really pulled it off. 

She imagines him opening the letter in a house which faces the sunset and smells like the sea, and in that moment she already knows that she will break her promise to herself and write again. 

She is being careful, she tells herself, only sending word every month or so when Zamîn is already due to visit her family in Rómenna, so as not to arouse suspicion. She tells Elendil not to reply; that it will be safer thus. Still she waits with baited breath each time she hears her maid’s footsteps on the stairs after she returns from a trip to the coast.

“No news, my Lady,” Zamîn will say upon her return and, at first, Miriel is at least partly relieved. No news means that they have not found him yet. But over time it becomes harder to suppress the hope that, this time, there will be an answering message for her. Every time there is no news of him, she chides herself for her disappointment. After all, is he not obeying her own command? 

****

Pharazôn goes through charade of dining with her now and then, as though she is truly his guest and not his prisoner. They take supper in his private parlour. Mostly they speak of nothing much. Art, poetry, childhood reminiscences. When the King is in an indulgent mood the conversation can be almost pleasant. It used to be, long ago, Miriel remembers. They had been close as children, despite the enmity that existed between their fathers. For a moment, every now and again, she can almost make herself forget that these dinners are now the only time she is allowed to leave her rooms. 

Sometimes he tells her about his latest projects in the city and abroad. The aqueduct is taking shape. A fleet is bound for Umbar to expand the Numenorean colony there. They are draining the marshes at Nindamos to reclaim the land for crops. The Sea Guard requires expansion - he may have to start conscripting. Kemen has sailed for Pelagir to oversee the construction of a new guard tower.  And on and on… The King’s reforming zeal is on full display on nights like these. 

Once or twice the mask slips. 

“Where is Elendil, Miriel?” He says it conversationally. 

She answers truthfully, “I do not know.” 

“No matter,” Pharazôn says. “I will smoke him out eventually.” 

Some evenings, if she is unlucky, Belzagar joins them. Miriel wonders how a man raised in the shadow of Sorontil, mountain home of the eagles of Manwë themselves, can have ended up so resolutely… earthbound . Why her cousin has chosen him for a confidante she does not know. He always bids her goodnight by kissing her hand and it makes her skin crawl. 

Occasionally there are other guests; nobles from the north or the south-east of the island. These nights are her greatest opportunity, for they are far more likely to let something slip than Belzagar or the King himself. They must know that she has been deposed, of course, but Miriel suspects that Pharazôn would rather conceal the fact that she is his captive, and to give his guests too strict a set of instructions on what they can and cannot say around her would give the game away. So on evenings when they have company, she puts on her most placid smile, laughs at their jokes, and hopes that they may reveal something.   

****

Over time, she starts smuggling out scraps of information that she gleans from her dinners with the King. She sends Zamîn with messages for the Faithful. Normally they are by word of mouth alone but occasionally they risk a note in the common tongue if there is too much for her maid to commit to memory. She knows that her brother passes on the details to sailors and merchants who visit the docks and taverns of Rómenna and keep their faith in secret. In this way, she thinks, she can still be of service to her people. 

She warns them that those caught practising the old faith are to be conscripted as oarsmen in the King’s expanded armada, that they should hide books written in the ancient tongue, that any merchant who sails under the banner of the White Tree, instead of the King’s new emblem of the Golden Sun, is soon to be taxed double on their wares. 

Her letters to Elendil are the only ones she still dictates using the old Tengwar characters. She trusts Zamîn implicitly but these are too private, too personal for another's eyes. They are for his alone. 

Meleth nîn she names him. Beloved. 

****

Something is different this evening. The air is thick with anticipation. Pharazôn is plotting, she can feel it. 

“Where is Elendil, Miriel?” 

She gives her customary reply, but this time it is Belzagar who answers her. 

“Soon enough we shall have no need of your answer. Let us see how the great sea captain fares when the King moves against his traitorous kin.”

“You would not harm Eärien?” Miriel asks, her studied calm slipping for a moment.

“No indeed cousin” says Pharazôn, voice like honey, like she is a child he must indulge. “Eärien has proved herself a loyal subject of Numenor. Was it not she who first brought me your elf-stone?” 

So it had been planned between them. Miriel has long suspected that Eärien collaborated with Pharazôn to stoke the coup against her. Still, it stings a little to have it confirmed. If only she had come to her directly with her anger, she thinks, rather than to her cousin. They might have been allies. They might even have been friends. 

“Eärien will be safe as long as she remains loyal. She has no great love for you, that much is certain" Pharazôn continues with a laugh. "And besides, she may yet be of use to me. No, it is with the so-called Lords of Andunië that I intend to deal. If they are harbouring your captain, as I suspect they are, they may yet be… persuaded to give him up. Either way, I shall take back that city for those loyal to Numenor before the year is out.” 

****

She must get a message to him at once. 

“Are we alone?” she asks Zamîn as soon as she is back in her bedchamber, and then “I know I am asking a great deal of you, dear friend, but I need you to take a letter now, tonight.” 

She dictates in an urgent whisper. She tells him he must leave Andunië with as many of the Faithful as he can gather to his cause. She tells him to set sail for Middle Earth. And then — because this will be the last letter — she tells him that she had hoped they might meet again one last time, but she knows now it is not to be. Yet whatever separates them and whatever her fate, he has given her the gift of a love she never thought she would feel, and for that she will be ever grateful.

After Zamîn leaves she tosses and turns fitfully. She dreams of flames rising over a black dome on the slopes of the Meneltarma, of the face of Halbrand the Southlander, but wrong somehow — twisted into a cruel sneer — and, as ever, of a great wave. 

****

In the morning, one of her other attendants comes to her early.

“Ar-Pharazôn has requested your company, my Lady.” 

Something is wrong. Miriel knows it. Pharazôn never calls for her at this hour. As she is led through the palace the dread pools her stomach. They are not heading to his parlour, she realises, but to the council chamber. 

Entering she can feel that there are several people present. Her pulse quickens. Then the world drops out from underneath her. 

“I’m sorry, my Lady.” It is Zamîn’s tearful voice. 

Pharazôn has the letter.

Chapter Text

When Elendil was a child, his father had taken him up the hill above the city of Andunië one day to the high tower of Tar-Minastir. The tower had not been used by the rulers of Numenor in many years, but it was still guarded and maintained by the Lords of Andunië. Handing him a spyglass, Amandil had pointed out to the West.

“Look out there, son. Do you see the white sails? It is an elven ship.” 

Elendil had stood transfixed, for it was twenty years at that time since Ar-Gimilzôr the cruel had placed a ban on ships arriving from Tol-Eressëa, and he had never seen one. 

“Will the elves come to visit us father?” he had asked.

“No son,” his father had answered sadly. “They are voyaging from Avallónë on business of their own, and whither they sail, I cannot say.”  

The ship passed on, stately and beautiful, and Elendil watched until its sails were nothing more than a white pinprick on the horizon. 

After Tar-Palantir took the Sceptre the ban was lifted and the new King would often visit the tower of Tar-Minastir, gazing out towards the sea and waiting, but the white ships of the Eldar never returned.

****

Now Elendil climbs the steep hill towards the tower once more, but this time it is only to look for ships from Rómenna rounding the point and entering the Bay of Andunië. It is warm, the first really warm day of the year so far. The sweat beads on his brow as he climbs and his heavy woollen tunic clings to him uncomfortably, but he is grateful for the exercise, grateful to be able to venture out at all. 

For several months after his arrival, he had kept to his father’s house, for though Amandil had never hidden his faith or his somewhat elf-ish ways, and though he had never been given any trouble for it by the people of Andunië, still they could not be sure how many in the city might take the King’s part if they learned that their Lord was harbouring his fugitive son. And so his father had spent the winter meeting with many of the more influential families in the city and holding counsel with leaders among the Faithful to try to ascertain how great their numbers truly were — until, when the days began to lengthen and the trees were in bud once more, he finally told Elendil that he had as much trust as a man might have in such divided times that he could go out into the city and come to no harm. 

Now he goes abroad freely, though he is ever watchful, and he has not yet been apprehended or slain. 

He stops to rest when he reaches the top of the hill, sitting down upon the grassy summit. The water in his flask has become tepid with his climb, but it is better than nothing, and he splashes some on his face and neck to cool himself. With his eyes closed he can hear the cries of the gulls below and the whirring of insects tempted out by the spring sunshine. As he opens them once more, he sees one of the tower guards approaching. The man is young — little more than a boy really — but tall and broad-shouldered.

“Elendil, son of Amandil?” he asks. 

Elendil tenses up. He wishes he were not sitting down and wonders how swiftly his hand could reach his sword hilt from this position. 

Warily he gets to his feet. “I am he.”

Then, to his surprise, the young man breaks into a smile. “I thought it was you! I said so to Hathol over there” (gesturing to the other guard). “We heard you had returned to your father’s house and I have been hoping to see you. The Valar bless you, my Lord. It is good to have you back in Andunië.”

Elendil laughs then. “Quite a fright you gave me there soldier,” he says. “I thought you might be about to cut me down.”

“No indeed! I would not try my luck crossing swords with one of the House of Valandil,” the guard says with a laugh of his own. Then, lowering his voice, “and besides, you have many friends in the city, my Lord.”

“I am glad to hear you say it. I was uncertain of my welcome when I learned that news of my crimes had reached Andunië before I did,” Elendil answers with a wry smile. 

“Aye, the messengers said you were wanted for treason, but most did not believe it. Or at least, what they would call treason, we would call loyalty to the old ways. All that is to say, my Lord, that if the King moves against you, the greater part of our people would follow you over him.”

Elendil is moved by the young man’s earnestness, as much as he is heartened by his words. Still, he does not want the Faithful risking their lives for his sake if he can help it. “Make no dangerous promises to me yet, soldier,” he tells the guard. “I hope that it may never come to that.”

The guard sounds unconvinced. “Perhaps not, but the tidings from the East grow worse and worse. We have heard that Pharazôn plans to crew his galleys from among the Faithful of Rómenna. Conscription, they are calling it. I say he wishes to make us into slaves.”

“That is grave indeed. Do we know how these rumours began?” Elendil asks. 

“No one seems sure. Perhaps some of the Faithful still remain among his counsellors in secret. Whoever the source, the tidings have proved true so far. My cousin in Rómenna tells me that no merchant dares sail under the banner of the White Tree any more for fear of being deprived of all his profits, and we had word of that levy last winter almost as soon as the King started to demand it.”

This seems as good a moment as any for Elendil to ask the question he most wants an answer to. “Any sign of a ship arriving from Rómenna today?” 

I am hoping for a letter, he does not add. 

“Not yet, but if you would stay and wait a while, my Lord, we would be honoured if you would take luncheon with us.” 

****

No ship arrives that day. After spending a pleasant hour or so with the guard — Baranor is his name — and his companion, Elendil takes his leave and makes his way back to his father’s house, trying not to feel too disappointed. He knows he cannot expect letters from Miriel often. That she has managed to send any at all is a kind of miracle. He has a small bundle of them now, treasured as dearly as the ancient scrolls in his father’s library, every word of them burned into his heart. 

His father and Anárion are on the terrace when he returns. 

“Where have you been?” Amandil asks. “You have been gone for hours.” 

“I know where he has been,” Anárion says. “Up the hill to see whether any ships are coming in. You see, Grandfather, he is waiting for a letter from his lady… He has quite a collection of them now. Takes them out in the evenings and re-reads them when he thinks no one will notice!”

The words are mocking, but he says them with such a warm smile that Elendil cannot find it in himself to be annoyed. It has become one of Anárion’s greatest pleasures, teasing his father about his obvious infatuation with the Queen. Over the months since they first spoke about Miriel, his son has peppered him with questions about her: “Did she really fight a sea monster for you, Father?”, “And how did the people not realise that the eagle was for her?”, “A seeing stone? Is she a prophetess then, like her father?” and “Do you think the Lady Galadriel might send her aid if we could get a message to her?” Now he has become quite the zealous advocate for her cause. 

Amandil simply raises his eyebrows and says nothing in response to his grandson’s words, and Elendil smothers his embarrassment. They have important matters to discuss. 

“You are right, I have been to the tower of Tar-Minastir,” he says. “I had a most interesting conversation with the guards there. They seemed to think that there are many within the city who oppose Pharazôn’s rule as steadfastly as we do. Baranor I spoke to, son of Bereg, and he was quite certain of it. His father is the Captain of the Tower Guard and ought to know. It would seem, Father, that our cause has more support than we ever dared to hope. The question now is what shall we do with it.”   

Anárion, of course, is all for raising an army and storming the capital. 

He has always been like that, his son. Hot tempered. Generous to a fault. Swift to anger but swifter to forgive. Elendil wonders sometimes where he gets it from. Not from him certainly, and not from Nenneth either, for all that he looks like her. Elendil's wife had been a wise, patient, even-tempered woman. 

“We have not the means to move openly against Pharazôn,” Elendil tells him wearily for the seventh or eighth time. 

Then, turning to Amandil, “but it seems that there may be some dissent even within the royal court itself. Someone has been feeding information out to Rómenna. News of the sun-tribute reached our harbour by sea even before the messengers of the King arrived to declare it. That suggests to me that the merchants who brought the tidings hither were given some foreknowledge of the King’s designs. If we can discover who the informant is, we may be able to use it to our advantage.”

“That is curious indeed,” says Amandil. “I shall invite the members of our Merchants’ Guild to dine with us… see what I can find out about where these tidings come from. You had better make yourself scarce though, Elendil. For all that we hope that most are loyal to our cause, your presence may not help to loosen their tongues. In the meantime, I think you had better spend as much time as you can with the tower guards. You may learn something to our advantage. And besides, you can look out for arriving ships better from the top of the hill…” 

Elendil sees his father’s eyes twinkling with mirth. It is no use. It seems his fate now is to be mocked by his father and son alike and all he can do is shake his head and laugh at himself in turn.  

Later, he sits alone in his chamber and carefully takes out the bundle of letters from the casket where he has stowed them. He turns them over in his hands, re-reads them even though he knows every one by heart. 

He still cannot quite believe that she would write to him in such terms, with words of love that he thought were gone from his life forever. He has loved before, of course. He loved Nenneth deeply and truly. In her he had found safety, warmth, comfort, and a deep joy in the home they had built together. He wonders sometimes whether he ever would have left for Armenalos if he had not lost her.  

But this time, the fire feels different. Less warm embers and more a raging inferno. It might consume him if he lets it. He feels like a callow youth, sweaty-palmed and anxious, every time a letter arrives. No wonder Anárion mocks him for it. 

Now, lying in bed, he imagines her whispering the words from her letters into his ear. His breathing quickens, heart hammering in his ears. He remembers the smell and the feel and the taste of her, imagines her above him, her dark hair framing her face and falling over the swell of her breasts, imagines her with her head thrown back, lips parted in a gasp of pleasure as she sinks down onto his straining cock. He groans, hips jerking involuntarily, and takes himself in hand. Throwing his other arm across his face, he hides his eyes in the crook of his elbow. He feels a stab of shame, through the haze of his desire, to be imagining his Queen in this way, but he cannot seem to stop himself. 

Then, his fantasy changes. She is beneath him now, soft and warm and willing as he takes her on the floor of her chamber before the fireplace where she kissed him for the first time. His thrusts into his own palm speed up, turning frantic, hips stuttering, until he comes hard with a bitten off cry. 

That night he has dreams which he cannot afterwards remember. He only knows that he awakes in a cold sweat, and with tears fresh upon his cheeks. 

Chapter Text

It was a trap. Miriel can see that now. She was reckless. She should have waited to send the letter. She should have sent Zamîn alone with no letter at all, and simply asked her to pass a message to her brother by word of mouth. She should have, she should have, she should have… Now Zamîn may never see her brother again, and it is her fault.  

She begins to speak at once. She tries to sound calm, steady, reasonable, but she cannot keep the frantic edge out of her voice. Her maid was just following orders, she tells Pharazôn, she did not even know what she was carrying. She does not read the ancient tongue. She merely took down dictation with no idea what was being said. The fault is hers alone. “Please, she is innocent. Please.” 

“Silence!” Pharazôn’s voice is low but his tone is terrible. “I do not appreciate spies in my court.”

She starts to protest but he cuts her off once more —

“She was caught sneaking out with your letter. Tried to tell us she was only on her way to visit her brother. In the dead of night! Your maid is a fool, Miriel, but it is you who have disappointed me. After the restraint I have shown. The generosity, in allowing you to remain as a guest in my house and share my supper table when I could have had you clapped in irons and languishing away in the dungeons for how you have allied yourself with the forces ranged against us. After all that, you would send details of my private affairs to one of the foremost traitors of Westernesse, and then stand before me and dare to beg my pardon! Now, I will ask you one more time, cousin ” — he spits out the word like a curse — "Where. Is. Elendil?"

Miriel hears a sharp intake of breath from among those gathered in the room and wonders if perhaps Eärien is present and this is the first that she is learning of the letter's intended recipient. If only she could see her. 

Whatever Pharazôn is about to do to her is going to hurt. That much Miriel knows. Still, she would not let him rob her of her dignity if she can help it. With as much defiance as she can muster, she raises her face towards him. “I do not know, and if I did I would not tell you.”

“Very well,” he says calmly. “Have the girl put to death.”

Miriel’s resolve shatters. She falls to her knees, eyes downcast, forgetting everything she has ever said about kneeling in Numenor. She hears her own voice as if from a great distance, begging for Zamîn’s life, asking Pharazôn to take her instead. “She is innocent. The fault is mine, cousin. Only mine. Please, I beg you. Spare her.”

“Enough!”

There is an awful moment of silence, but for the sound of Zamîn weeping.

Then heavy steps approach her and thick, blunt fingers cup her chin, forcing her to turn her face upwards once more from where she still kneels on the floor. One fingernail digs into the soft skin of her neck. Miriel holds her breath. Pharazôn is silent, appraising. At length he releases his hold on her. When he speaks again, Miriel can almost hear the cruel smile in his voice. 

“I will spare her.” He says it casually, like he is pronouncing on his preferred colour for a tablecloth, not weighing a young woman’s life in the balance. Miriel almost sobs with relief, but it is short lived. “On one condition…” 

She feels like a fly caught in a web. She knows he is winding up another trap for her but cannot yet anticipate what form it will take. She thinks to herself that there is almost nothing she would not do if she could both spare her maid and protect Elendil, and of course Pharazôn knows it. 

“She may leave your service, leave Armenalos, and return to her family in safety… if you agree to become my wife.”

And the trap springs. 

Dumbfounded, she wonders for a moment why he would ask such a thing of her. What does he stand to gain? His rule is secure, the Faithful are scattered and no longer under her leadership, she is blind, powerless, a captive in her own city, hardly much of a figurehead around which to raise a rebellion. He needs no heir, for he already has Kemen, little as he seems to think of him. She is under no illusions that he cares for her, or even desires her. Why would he take her to wife?

Then it dawns on her. He has read the letter. 

Her cousin may have forgotten much of the scholarship of his youth but he surely remembers enough of the ancient tongue to decipher its contents, and not only to pick out his own name and that of the city of Andunië. She feels like she has been stripped bare and flayed. For the words she had set down for Elendil’s eyes alone, exposing the deepest, most vulnerable part of herself, to be read by Pharazôn, perhaps read aloud before his counsellors… it is a humiliation almost beyond endurance. 

He had surely suspected that there was something between her and the captain. Well, now he knows for sure. Knows all the depths of her love and longing. It is out of cruelty, then, that he would wed her, simply because he can. It is to take the one precious source of light in her rapidly darkening world and extinguish it.  

Miriel burns with hatred then. But what choice does she have? She cannot let Zamîn die when she has the power to save her. And somewhere deep down beneath the weight of dread and horror that settles upon her, a small, flickering ember of hope lingers.

Eärien. Something in Miriel’s heart tells her that Eärien is not a lost cause. How could she be, when she is Elendil’s daughter? She came to Miriel once before to propose an uneasy alliance of sorts, when her father was to face the sea trial. Now that her letter has failed, Miriel must find a way of getting a message out of the city to warn him of the King’s encroaching forces. His daughter may be her last best hope, and becoming Pharazôn’s consort may be her only way of getting close enough to her to try. 

Slowly she rises to her feet, her hands balled into fists by her sides, fingernails digging in so deep they draw blood. 

“Very well,” she says. “I will be your wife.”

****

Her parting from Zamîn is bitter indeed. She can say so little of what she wishes to and she has little hope that they will ever meet again. She is forced to say farewell under the watchful eyes of the King and his advisors, making sure that she has no opportunity to communicate the contents of the letter to her maid in a language that she will understand. 

She steps towards her tentatively, hands outstretched, and Zamîn comes to meet her all in a rush. She grasps both of Miriel's hands in her own and her tears fall on them. But when she starts to apologise Miriel cuts her off. “No, no apologies my dearest girl. Not between you and I.”

Then, because there are no words, Miriel simply embraces her. She holds her while she weeps, strokes her hair and hushes her like a child, until she feels a heavy hand upon her shoulder and the guards are forcing them to part.

Miriel does not weep, though her eyes burn. As she is led from the council chamber, Pharazôn says “we shall be married in three weeks.”

Chapter Text

Eärien is given no warning of what is about to happen in the council chamber. It is becoming something of a pattern, the King or Lord Belzagar asking her to gather together groups of people — nobles, guild members, sailors in the Sea Guard — without telling her why. I’ve no answers to give, she had told the leaders of the Faithful of Armenalos when she had summoned them to the palace on the day that Ar-Pharazôn had had them imprisoned. At the time she had said it simply to quiet their questions, but nowadays she feels the truth of those words more and more.  

She had felt such a rush of power when then-Chancellor Pharazôn had listened to her suggestion about the Palantir before Miriel’s coronation that it had been almost dizzying. After weeks of her father silently withdrawing into himself, ignoring her desperate unspoken pleas for him to just hear her, hold her, comfort her, love her, the sweet relief of finally being heard was intoxicating. Encouraging her to speak, Belzagar had called her my child and she had almost wept at the word. She felt needed, useful, integral even to their cause. 

But now they tell her less and less about their plans. The King still hears her out when she has something to suggest, still seeks out her opinion when it comes to planning new building projects in the City, she still has her tasks and her status as a royal advisor, but she feels more than ever as though her life is composed of a series of questions without answers.

Now she stands in the council chamber wondering why she is here. She received a message at first light asking her to assemble the King’s counsellors. Once they are gathered, the guards bring in a weeping girl whom Eärien does not recognise. The King holds a piece of paper in his hand and the girl keeps glancing up at it furtively. 

When Miriel is escorted into the room she starts to put the pieces together, but it is not until the King speaks her father's name that her suspicions are confirmed. Then she cannot help the gasp that overtakes her. Belzagar gives her a sharp look but seems to content himself from her no doubt stunned expression that she had no knowledge of the letter before this moment. Miriel also turns towards her, as if she is seeking out her face, though she cannot see it. Eärien feels a sudden strange urge to hide. The King pays her no heed at all. His focus is entirely on Miriel. Eärien can only half see his face from where she is standing but she thinks he has the air of a cat about to pounce on its prey. She wonders what in Arda was in that letter…

She already suspected that Miriel was in love with her father, of course. It was plain when she saw them together in the palace dungeon that whatever feelings lay between them were more personal than simple duty and loyalty. Now she feels quite sure of it. She has seen Miriel willing to sacrifice herself several times over for his sake. If circumstances were different she might even love her for it, but Eärien cannot quiet her anger — not yet at least. Anger at Miriel for so rashly charging off to Middle Earth, anger at Isildur for readily volunteering to follow her, anger at her father for leaving her all alone to drown under the weight of her grief, and bone-deep bitter jealousy that he would choose to die for Miriel’s honour rather than live for his motherless daughter’s sake. 

Still, as she watches this strange power play unfolding before her in the council chamber, she finds herself softening towards the former Queen and pitying her. And when Miriel tells Ar-Pharazôn that she will never give up Elendil’s whereabouts, Eärien feels, if not warmth towards her, at least a grudging respect. Yes, Miriel loves her father. No doubt about it. She does not need to have read the letter in Ar-Pharazôn’s hand to know.

Someone other than the King must have read it, though, for rumours soon abound. Going about the city in the weeks following the announcement of the royal engagement, Eärien hears men whispering amongst themselves in streets and workshops, even members of the Kingsguard, laughing at the Queen for her silly passion and saying all manner of crude and degrading things about her and Elendil.

“I heard she was caught sending love letters to that sea captain of hers.”

“So she was, and she swore to Ar-Pharazôn she would never give him up. Seems to think he’s some kind of hero, and not just a dirty traitor.”

“Do you think he was bedding her?” 

“Must have been. You saw the way she behaved when he was going to be tossed to the worm - right out in public too. She’s no blushing maiden that’s for sure.” 

“I’m surprised the King will still have her. An elf-lover’s spoiled goods.” 

“She should thank those Valar of hers that she is not with child. The King certainly would not have had her if she was carrying another man’s bastard. More likely he’d have had her put to death.” 

“Perhaps she is barren. She always did have a cold way about her, even when her father was still alive. And who knows whether that accident that blinded her damaged her in other ways.” 

“She is comely though. I would not say no if she invited me into her bed.” 

“Nor I, to be sure. Though it seems she could not keep her captain satisfied, if he left the city without her.”

“Maybe it is he who cannot perform.” 

“Aye, perhaps. It would explain why none of his children look like him!”

Eärien walks on with their mocking laughter ringing in her ears. They only dare speak of such things when they do not realise she is listening and it makes her want to weep with rage and humiliation. 

She cannot shake the sense that this is all wrong. Not Ar-Pharazôn’s rule, for it is right that Numenor be ruled by one with the strength and judgement to chart a less ruinous course for the kingdom than the one Miriel chose… the one that robbed her of her brother and so many others of their brothers and sisters and sons and daughters. And for what?! But the fact that the King and Miriel are to be wed sits uneasily within her, and as much as she might try to tell herself it is only out of concern that Ar-Pharazôn’s consort should not be disloyal to the new regime, she knows there is more to it than that. Eärien watched Miriel’s face when the King made her his offer of marriage. She had looked absolutely stricken, and she had accepted him with the air of one being led to the gallows.

****

She is lonely. She is loath to admit it, even to herself, but it is true. The house she used to share with her father and Isildur feels enormous now and she often finds herself simply wandering through unused rooms. She is respected among the King’s advisors, but would not call any of them friends. The guild members with whom she used to associate as an apprentice still treat her with courtesy but she cannot help but notice that they watch what they say around her now. And her older friends, well, they are all dead or gone from the city. 

She spends more and more time walking through the Old Quarter. It is quieter these days. Many of the Faithful who used to live here have been conscripted into the King’s armada, or imprisoned, or have fled. Those families who do remain tend to keep themselves to themselves as much as possible. Still, it is the most beautiful part of the city, and Eärien finds that its ancient masonry and the intricate winding patterns of the streets calm her. Sometimes she takes her sketchbook with her on days when she is not needed elsewhere and sits for hours at a time drawing. 

One afternoon, about a fortnight after the discovery of Miriel’s letter, she is sketching in a square overlooking the docks when she looks up and sees a ship approaching bearing the royal banner. The King is not abroad, which means it can only be Kemen’s ship. She abruptly stows her sketchbook and hastens towards the waterfront. He has been away for months and she is looking forward to seeing him, even though their friendship is not what it once was. She used to enjoy his company so much back when she first joined the Builders’ Guild. He was so obviously smitten, always trying to draw a laugh out of her here or put in a good word for her there. The attention was flattering, of course, but he was also one of the first people in the City who really seemed to care for her opinion. Now many people care to hear her opinions, but her loneliness is bone deep. 

Kemen is different too. Since Valandil’s death he holds himself apart from her in a way he never used to. He still will not tell her what really happened that night when the worshippers attacked him in the temple, leaving him with a broken arm and her father imprisoned for inciting an uprising. She saw Valandil threaten Kemen once before in the Old Quarter, the day they buried Tar-Palantir. He seemed to mean it too. And when he refused her offer to have him taken off the list of officers to be stripped of their rank, his hatred for the new regime and his contempt for her part in it had been on full display. Still, she never quite expected that hatred to express itself in an attempt on another Numenorean’s life. And yet she misses him. She cannot help it. She grieves Valandil silently in the deepest recesses of her heart, and she grieves the loss of the easy friendship she used to share with Kemen. 

The ship docks and the Prince is one of the first to emerge from it, flanked by two guards. He spots her in the crowd gathered to receive them and greets her with a smile. She notices that his arm is no longer bound in a sling. He makes his way over to where she is standing and kisses her hand performatively. 

“Eärien, it is so good to see you! You will not believe how much I have to tell you. We are expanding the colony fivefold at Pelagir. There is to be a new guard tower — perhaps you can be the one to design it….” He rattles on and on, scarcely pausing for breath and certainly not to ask her any questions. With a shock of embarrassment Eärien realises that tears are starting to form in her eyes. She looks down, blinking hard, determined not to let them fall and not to let Kemen notice. 

When she has regained control of herself, she looks back up towards the ship and in that moment her world tilts on its axis. Kemen is still speaking of timber supplies and trade routes but she is no longer listening. There is a ringing in her ears as the sound of the city about her drops away. She is gazing over Kemen’s shoulder at the disembarking sailors, for the face of one is painfully, achingly familiar. 

Then, with a cry, Eärien is running, sprinting headlong down the jetty. She pushes frantically past the sailors who stand in her way, dashes up the gangway, and flings herself into Isildur's outstretched arms.

Chapter Text

The night before her wedding Pharazôn comes to her in her rooms. Like the last time he was here, she does not hear him come in. How he can make his tread so heavy at some times and so silent at others she does not know. 

“Ready for tomorrow?” he asks and Miriel startles at the unexpected sound of his voice. 

There can be no proper answer to his question. Yes, I am ready to throw away all my hopes of happiness in the service of my people. No, how could I ever be ready to enter into an unwilling marriage born out of coercion. 

Instead, she simply says “I am prepared.”

“You are yet to choose your gown,” he says. “I thought white. A sign of purity. Like the moon over the sea.” 

They have done this dance once before, under very different circumstances. 

“I would prefer red” says Miriel, and then, because she knows he can make her do anything he chooses if he detects even a hint of resistance, she forces herself to smile up at him and continues in the sweetest voice she can muster, “crimson, for Numenor’s future.” 

“As you prefer.” She has placated him for now. 

She thinks that whatever colour he had suggested, she would have done everything in her power to choose another. She thinks that it is fitting, that she should be married to her jailor in a gown the colour of her own blood. She tries not to think that, in another lifetime, she would have married Elendil in white.  

“I shall ask your maids to have you ready by noon,” Pharazôn continues. “I trust I can rely upon you to be cooperative?”

A threat, then, and an extremely thinly veiled one at that. 

“I shall do my duty,” Miriel tells him. That much at least is true. She means it from the bottom of her heart. 

****

They are wed. She does not know the priest. All the Faithful priests in Armenlos have been rounded up by now — stripped of rank, or imprisoned, or worse — and at any rate no Faithful priest would ever have willingly consented to marry her to one so near her in blood. It goes against all the ancient laws of Numenor. This one names her Ar-Zimraphel as she takes the vows and Miriel feels like a stranger to herself. 

After that, life goes on much as before. She is no less a prisoner than she was but she is brought out like an ornament now and again on feast days and high days, and she is allowed daily walks around the palace grounds. She does not try to befriend any of her attendants this time. She does not dare. She walks alone, with a stick to guide her, watched from a distance at all times by the palace guards.

She misses Zamîn terribly and prays nightly that she made it safely to her brother’s house. Her personal library gathers dust, for there is no one to read to her anymore. She still plays the harp, but she no longer sings songs of the Elder Days. They are too painful, and she is never quite sure who might be listening. She spins on a silver spinning wheel, which the King gave her as a wedding present. Silk and woollen yarn — another half-remembered skill from her girlhood, to which she now returns for something to occupy her time, so that she does not sink entirely under the monotonous weight of her new life. 

Pharazôn does not lay a finger on her, except occasionally to offer her his arm in public. For that at least she is grateful. She had dreaded the thought that he might expect her to perform wifely duties in his bed. Then again, she has never known her cousin to take an interest in any woman that way. There was certainly little warmth and less passion in his marriage to Kemen’s mother. 

Their private dinners have stopped too. In fact he speaks to her less than he did before they were married. Against all reason, Miriel finds that she misses their conversations, in spite of everything. Though physically she is less confined than formerly, her isolation feels more complete. 

The fact that her new husband hardly speaks to her also means she has fewer opportunities than previously to learn anything useful about his plans. Though even if she did find something out now, she would have no way of getting the news out of the city. Her fear for Elendil and the Faithful of Andunië grows with every day that passes. The summer is all but over, autumn is approaching, and she does not know how soon the promised assault upon the city may take place. Before the year is out, Pharazôn had said. As she spins, and plays, and walks in the palace gardens, she turns the matter over and over in her mind, trying desperately to come up with any way that she might be able to get a message to Elendil. She always circles back to Eärien, but it would certainly arouse suspicion if she were to ask to see her and besides Miriel does not want to put her at risk. 

****

If Miriel’s days are dreary and full of anxiety, her nights are worse still. She is haunted by terrible vivid dreams. 

She is floating on a raft, adrift on the open sea, watching as the wave overtakes the island. The peak of the Meneltarma is rent asunder and crumbles into dust. She hears thousands upon thousands of voices crying out in fear and anguish and she can do nothing but listen and watch and wait until the wave overwhelms her too. 

She is lying — naked, afraid, alone, and in pain — in the bed that her father died in. She does not know how she came to be there and she finds that she does not have the strength to rise. Then suddenly she hears a heavy tread upon the stairs and is gripped with a fear so terrible that for a moment it seems to stop her heart. 

She is in the throne room and a man with golden hair sits upon a black throne. At least she thinks he is a man. Her sight is restored to her in her dreams but she finds she cannot catch a glimpse of his face no matter how she tries, for it shifts into smoke as she approaches the throne. The figure laughs and it echoes around the throne room, pure malice distilled into sound. He laughs and laughs and laughs as the wave takes him.

Miriel wakes with a start and for a moment she is almost grateful for the darkness.

****

Then, finally, on the first day of autumn, the opportunity she has been waiting for arrives. Someone enters her parlour and instead of one of her attendants, it is Eärien who says “will you walk with me?”

They have not spoken since the night before her sea trial, almost a year ago. Miriel wonders whether Pharazôn has been keeping them apart on purpose at the few public functions she has attended since her marriage, or whether it is Eärien herself who has been avoiding her. Nor is she certain whether this visit is at the behest of the King or not. Still, she will take whatever chance she can get and so she gladly assents.

Once they are in the gardens, they walk in silence for a while, side by side but not touching. Miriel is used to the route by now and can navigate it easily with only the aid of her stick. She assumes her companion is waiting until they are out of earshot of the guards. When at length Eärien does speak her words are not at all what Miriel is expecting. 

“I have been gathering my courage to come and see you these past months.”

“Gathering your courage?” Miriel asks, puzzled. “I am surely not so formidable.”

“It is not that,” says Eärien. “It is only that I have been ashamed.”

Now Miriel is truly bewildered. What in Arda can have prompted this abrupt change of heart, if that is what this is? It could be a trap of course. It would not be the first time. But there is something so earnest in Eärien’s voice that Miriel longs to believe that, whatever this repentance stems from, it is genuine, even if not complete. She waits quietly to hear more. 

At last, with an intake of breath that sounds as though she is steeling herself against some painful task, Eärien speaks again. “My brother has returned from Middle Earth.”

Miriel gasps. The tears start in her eyes. She feels, for a moment, as light as air, like a great weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She had not realised just how much Isildur’s fate had haunted her until now.

“Oh, these are wonderful tidings indeed! I am so very happy for you Eärien,” she says and grasps the younger woman's hand in her own. Her heart feels so full that it is almost overflowing, and when she thinks of Elendil and the reunion that he might someday now have with his son, her tears flow freely. 

“You do not chastise me?” Eärien asks, and for a moment she sounds almost like a child. It occurs to Miriel that the loss of her mother forced her to become a woman before her time. And, for all that she adores him, she knows that Elendil has not always been the most attentive father. 

“Why would I?” she says.

“I blamed you so harshly.”

“You were grieving. I know how grief darkens the heart. Why would I chastise you now, in the face of this unlooked for blessing? This is no time for anger. On the contrary, it is the first time I have known joy these many months. Not since…”

“Since my father left,” Eärien whispers. “You really did love him, didn't you?”

“I did.” says Miriel. “I do.”

“How can you bear it?” asks Eärien. “To be apart like this and wed to another.” 

“I bear it because I must. I bear it because I have faith in the people of Numenor, and faith in your father to lead them after I am gone. And I bear it because I know that I sent him away to keep him safe.”

They walk on for a while longer in silence, until Eärien says quietly “is he safe?”

Now is the moment of reckoning, when Miriel must decide whether to trust her. Though really it is hardly much of a choice. She must trust her, because time is running out, but truth be told Miriel thinks she would have trusted her anyway. It is simply in her nature. And besides, she can hear the worry plain in Eärien’s voice. 

“He is safe for the moment, as far as I know,” she tells Eärien in a low voice, “but there is danger on the horizon. I told him to make for the West and to rejoin your grandfather and brother there. I do not know for certain whether he made it, but I choose to believe that he did. I sent several messages to him after his departure — never mind how. Whether he ever received them I know not. I always told him not to try to reply. As you no doubt already know, my last letter was intercepted by the King. It carried tidings of his plan to take Andunië by force by the end of the year and to capture the Lord and his family.”

Miriel is still holding Eärien’s hand in her own and she can feel her trembling, though she remains quiet. The final risk is yet to be taken. Miriel takes a deep breath. “Can you help me get a message to your father Eärien?” she says. 

There is a moment of silence that seems to stretch on into eternity. Miriel's heart hammers in her ears. Until finally Eärien answers, “I will try.” 

“Oh thank you, thank you!” Miriel says, low but fervent. “The Valar bless you.”

“Offer me none of their blessings. I do not want them,” says Eärien, suddenly cool and haughty. 

“Well then, at least accept my most heartfelt gratitude,” Miriel answers, and thinks she feels Eärien squeeze her fingers just slightly, before letting go of her hand. 

They have nearly completed their circuit of the gardens now. Soon they will be too close to the guards to speak openly. But Eärien has one more question for her before they reach the gate. 

“Why are you trusting me?” she asks. “I could turn you in to Ar-Pharazôn this moment.”

Miriel considers for a moment. 

“Call it an act of faith,” she says.

Chapter Text

“Yes, I spoke to her. Now will you please stop asking me about this Isil,” Eärien tells her brother, exasperated. 

He has been badgering her for weeks to go to Miriel, even threatening to walk up to the palace gates himself once or twice, as foolhardy as they both know that would be. They are lucky he has been allowed to resume any part of his old life at all. As Elendil’s son, and an Elf-friend in his own right, his situation is precarious. He has moved back into the house he shares with Eärien, and gone back to working in the stables with the horses of the Sea Guard. 

He speaks of his disgust at all that has happened in his absence only when the two of them are alone in the evenings, whispering to one another late at night after the servants have gone to bed. If he resents her for her part in it, he does not show it. But he is quite open in his hatred for the King and Kemen, at least behind closed doors. He wept on her shoulder when she told him about Valandil, and she knows he does not believe her account of what happened. In the past he would have shared his suspicions with the world, fueled by righteous reckless anger, but her brother is different since he returned from Middle Earth. He seems older, steadier, more careful. So he holds his tongue and Eärien squashes down the thought that she almost wishes he would not. 

Nevertheless, one thing he had absolutely insisted upon was that Miriel must be told of his return. 

“She tried to save me, Eärien,” he has told her a dozen times. “When the burning house collapsed on me, the last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was her through the doorway trying to reach me. I think that must have been how she lost her sight, for she could see as well as any of us just after the mountain erupted. I just want her to know that I am safe, and that I am grateful to her for trying.”

Eärien had protested that it would arouse suspicion if she asked to see Miriel out of the blue. It was not altogether a lie, but what had really held her back was her shame and embarrassment at having blamed the Queen so loudly and so long for her brother’s supposed death. She had half expected Isildur to call her a coward, but instead he seemed genuinely concerned.

“I know it is a risk, Sister, truly. I do not ask you to take it lightly. But please, if you have the opportunity, will you at least try for me?”

Eventually her love had overcome her shame. She had picked a moment when the King was from home, visiting Nindamos in the south to inspect the fruits of the great land reclamation efforts that had been undertaken there, and hoped against hope that the palace staff would see nothing amiss in a simple social call. 

So now, she and Isildur sit taking supper and she tells him that, yes, she has been to see the Queen. She does not wish to speak of it now. Her mind is still in turmoil after her promise to Miriel to try to get a message to her father, and there is so much else besides that she has not told her brother. But her efforts to quiet Isildur on the subject are in vain. 

“Eärien, you cannot tell me a thing like that and then expect me to ask nothing further. How did she take the news of my return? And how is she? Pharazôn has not been mistreating her has he? You know I don’t believe for a moment that she married him out of love.”

Eärien sighs. There is no getting away from the conversation, so she lies instead. Or at least, she does not tell the whole truth. 

“She is quite well. Ar-Pharazôn has not harmed her. Their marriage was political, to be sure, but Isil you must see that it makes sense to unite their claims to the throne like this.”

Isildur laughs mirthlessly. “To pretend that he did not usurp her you mean.” 

She hushes him, reminding him to keep his voice down. Then she continues, truthfully this time, “as for your return, she was so glad of it that she wept for joy.”

Her brother seems truly touched by this. She can see the small furrow on his brow, which is only visible when he is trying not to cry. Instead he asks her “and what of our father? Did she speak of him?”

Here is the moment of reckoning. Eärien does not yet know how she will attempt to get a message to her father to warn him of Ar-Pharazôn’s planned assault on Andunië. She promised Miriel she would try and she intends to keep her promise, but in the meantime secrecy is vital. 

“No, she did not,” she says. 

****

About a week later, Eärien walks back through the palace grounds late at night from a meeting of the Royal Council. With the King returned from Nindamos, all the talk tonight was of grain yields and trade revenues, but she had found it difficult to pay attention to anything that was said, letting it wash over her as she battled within herself. She still has no plan for communicating with her father and, what is worse, now she feels like a traitor into the bargain. To be trusted like this, greeted kindly and invited into the very council chamber of the King, all while plotting to betray a key strategic move to his enemies. It makes her deeply uneasy. 

She crosses the courtyard of Nimloth, the petals of the White Tree shining even in the dark, though there are not so many these days, nor are they quite so white. The palace and the city are both silent. The meeting of the Council ran late and most people are already abed at this hour. As she approaches the edge of the courtyard and is about to enter a passageway leading down to the main palace gate, she thinks she sees something move out of the corner of her eye, a shadowy figure perhaps. 

Her pulse quickens and the hair on the back of her neck stands on end. Her eyes scan the dark courtyard but she can see nothing but the Tree and, on the other side of it the ghostly outline of the winged helmets of two guards standing sentinel. She is about to call out to them when she is abruptly grabbed from behind, a hand clasped over her mouth to smother her scream as she is dragged backwards into an alcove out of sight of the guards. 

She struggles against her unknown assailant, until he spins her around to face him, hand still covering her mouth, and she finds herself face to face with —

“Isildur?!” Eärien whispers his name furiously as soon as he releases her. “What in Arda are you doing here? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Her brother places a finger to his lips. “Not here,” he whispers back, and gestures towards the narrow passageway she had been about to take. Seething silently Eärien leads the way and he follows her. They move quietly through the palace and out of an entrance which she knows is less often used than the main gate. The guards recognise her and stand aside, thankfully paying little attention to her companion. Isildur has pulled the hood of his dark cloak down so that it overshadows part of his face, and the night is dark enough to obscure the rest. 

They walk home in silence. She cannot bear to look at him lest her anger get the better of her. Only once they are home, with the door shut and bolted behind them, does she wheel round to face him at last. 

“What were you thinking?!” she hisses. “Don’t you know what a risk you were taking being in that place, Brother? One false step and you would have been caught. Do you think the King would have spared you then, after everything that happened with Father? I thought you had grown up during your time away and learnt to hold your peace, but you are still just as reckless as ever. And what about the risk to me? If you truly care so little for your own life I thought you might at least care about mine!” 

She knows her last words will hurt him but in this moment she does not care. She has chosen them on purpose to wound, and she sees in his face that they have hit their mark. Her rage is fueled by the fear and grief of having lost him once already. 

She expects him to react with defensiveness and anger of his own, but there is pity in his face as he says quietly, “will you let me tell you why I was there?” 

Eärien’s instinct is to tell him she does not care and then slam her chamber door in his face, but she controls herself. She owes him this much. 

“Very well,” she says. 

At this Isildur takes out something from inside his cloak. It is a fruit, about the size of an apple but golden in colour. It can only have come from Nimloth, though she has never known the White Tree to bear fruit before. 

She is incredulous. “Why?” she asks him. She cannot even get the whole of her question out. 

“I know in my heart that we shall have need of it,” is all he says. 

Eärien starts to laugh then and cannot seem to stop. There is a frantic edge to the sound of it. She can see Isildur’s eyes widen in concern and then, before she knows what is happening, her laughter has transformed into great hiccupping shuddering sobs, all the fight suddenly going out of her. Isildur puts down the fruit at once and draws her into his arms, holding her as she cries. “I cannot lose you again,” she whispers. “I have been so lonely.” 

“I am sorry for scaring you,” he says. “But I had to do something, Eärien. I cannot just stand by and watch these injustices unfold. I couldn't bear it.” 

It dawns on Eärien then that there is a way to solve both her dilemmas at once. It is a step she is loath to take, for it means she must bid farewell to Isildur again, so soon after being reunited with him. But it is her best hope of getting word to her father and keeping her unruly brother out of trouble at the same time.

“You have to leave, Isil,” she says. 

He looks bewildered. “Is what I have done truly so unforgivable?” he asks her. 

“No! You misunderstand me,” she says. “I wish I could keep you with me always, but for your own sake and for our father’s, you must go. There are things I have not told you since your return, but I think I must tell you all of it now.”

And so she does. She tells him all that she knows of their father’s imprisonment, how she had taken Miriel to him in the dungeons, how she had ascertained their feelings for one another. She tells him of the Sea Trial and Elendil’s flight, of Miriel’s letter and how she was found out. She tells him that Miriel agreed to marry the King so that the servant girl who carried the letter would not be put to death but that she had confessed her love for their father when Eärien spoke to her last week. Finally, she tells him that the letter which was intercepted carried a warning of the King’s plan to take Andunië by force.  

“You must go to him,” she concludes at last. “This place is not safe for you, Brother, and someone must warn him. Miriel told me that Ar-Pharazôn’s forces will be there before the year is out.” 

“Good gods!” Isildur exclaims. “I hardly know what to say. Of course I will go if there is no one else to warn him but Eärien, will you not come with me? We could be a family again.” 

Eärien’s heart aches at the thought of that, but she knows she will not go with him. 

“I cannot,” she tells him. “Isil, I love you and Father too, but you must understand that your cause is not my cause. Please do not ask me to explain any more than that.”  

She can scarcely explain her decision even to herself. Her reasons are wound together so tightly that it is hard to unpick them. Her love for her family is all mixed in with her resentment at her father’s abandonment. Her lack of faith in the Old Ways stands in stark contrast to her support for Ar-Pharazôn’s modernising project. For all that some of his methods concern her, she is a builder at heart and he wants to build. Much to her own surprise, there is also a small but insistent part of her which tells her she cannot leave Miriel behind. Their last conversation made a deep impression on her, and Eärien feels a strange kind of kinship with the Queen and a growing sense of protectiveness towards her. 

Isildur is still hesitant. “I cannot leave you here in danger,” he says. “Surely once my flight is discovered you will be at risk?”

He has a point. Eärien thinks for a moment and then says “perhaps not if I am the one to discover it…”

“What do you mean?” he asks her.

“You must leave tomorrow evening, after sunset. You are one of the best riders in Numenor, with access to the stables of the Sea Guard containing the finest horses in Armenalos. Take whichever will bear you the fastest and set off as soon as it is dark with all possible haste. I will give you twelve hours’ head start. That should be long enough to get you some way from the city. Then I will go to the King and tell him you are fled. I shall say we fought, and that I cast you off for disloyalty. He will certainly guess where you have gone, but with luck he shall not suspect my part in it.” 

Isildur is smiling at her now, head tilted to one side. He gives a quiet chuckle and shakes his head. “You look so like Mother when you’re being clever,” he says. 

**** 

Eärien does not go near the stables the next day. They have already said their goodbyes privately. She watches the sun set from a courtyard in the Old Quarter, sketchbook untouched in her lap, and continues to sit for a long while afterwards as the sky fades from orange to purple to inky blue, hoping against hope that he made it out of the city safely. Only when it is quite dark does she make her way home to the house in which she is now alone once more. 

The next morning, she hastens to the palace shortly after it gets light and asks the guards to take her to the throne room. She has urgent information for the King. 

Once she is brought before him, she looks Ar-Pharazôn straight in the eye. 

“Sire, my brother is fled.”

Chapter Text

The letters from Miriel have stopped and Elendil is beside himself. It has been six months since he last received one. At first he chided himself for his impatience. Of course she could not write often, he told himself. Had she not told him as much in her very first letter? But as weeks turned into months with no word, impatience became anxiety became dread. Now he is desperately afraid that some evil has befallen her. 

He tries to bury his fears as well as he can and throws himself into his and his father’s work of rallying the Faithful. Andunië has been a hive of activity over the summer. New ships have been built and new weapons forged. Amandil has visited every noble house in the city, and many of the meeting places of the townsfolk too. Often Elendil accompanies him. They now have a good grasp on who is sympathetic to their cause, and just how many might be prepared to take up arms for it should the need arise. 

In the evenings, while Amandil prays, Elendil sits in the library studying maps of Middle Earth until he knows every mountain range and river and curve of its coastline by heart. He copies new ones too, with the land of shadow around the mountain of fire in the place where the Southlands used to be. His heart aches as he draws anew the mountain which took his son from him, sketches the ridge where he realised Miriel had lost her sight for the first time, fills in the details of the road to Pelagir, which he rode side by side with Valandil. It feels like a kind of penance for his wavering faith.

One morning, he and his father are sparring in the courtyard when they are hailed by Bereg, the Captain of the Tower Guard. He has become a firm friend these past few months, and he and his son Baranor are frequent guests in Amandil’s house. 

“Good morning Captain,” Elendil greets him. “To what do we owe the pleasure?” 

“I only came to tell you, my Lord, that the tenth ship in the new fleet is complete. She is a fine vessel, though we are still some way short of Pharazôn’s armada.” He says the last part with a rueful laugh. 

“Have you managed to learn what has prompted the King to expand his fleet thus?” asks Amandil. “It seems strange, when we are not at war and timber is ever in such short supply.”

“Strange it is indeed,” replies Bereg. “But then something strange is happening, my Lord, mark my words. We have had no tidings from Rómenna since the summer, or at least none which seemed like they might come from one who knew aught of the King’s mind. I’ve as much idea as you what is happening with the new fleet and that is to say none. Whoever our royal informant was back in the spring, he has grown awfully silent. And then we found out the other day that the King himself has been married these four months, and we had heard nothing of it.” 

“Pharazôn, married!? To whom?” Elendil asks sharply. He almost does not wish to hear the answer, a sense of dread creeping over him. 

“To his cousin, if you can believe it,” says Bereg. “To Tar-Miriel,”  

Elendil reels backwards as though he has been dealt a blow. Only his father's steady grip on his arm keeps him upright. Distantly, he can hear Amandil making their excuses and then he is being guided through the house to his father’s private study and the door is closed behind him. 

“Elendil,” Amandil is saying gently. “Come now, sit down Son.” 

He sinks into a chair. Miriel, married to that monstrous man. He does not understand how it could have happened. He could never doubt her integrity so he knows she would not do such a thing for power alone. Did Pharazôn force her? Was it a play for peace? An effort to unite a divided nation? Or — an awful wretched part of him whispers — could she have somehow grown to love the King? Is that why her letters have stopped? He tries to squash the thought down. It is the same dark impulse which led him to heap blame upon Galadriel after Isildur was lost, and had Miriel herself not taught him that the answer to loss lay not in vengeance or self-pity, but in service to a greater cause? Still, the cost today feels dear indeed. 

Amandil tries to comfort him, after his fashion. He tells him that he must trust in the Valar, that Miriel knows what she is doing, that the One knows all things and this may be a part of His design, that he must have faith. But in this moment faith is hard to come by. He has been faithful and he has lost the people that he loves one after another. His wife, his son, Valandil, all dead. His daughter's respect, gone. And now Miriel, married to another and out of his reach forever. He does not know how long he sits there; hours maybe. He feels numb. Over the next few days he walks through his father’s house as if in a daze. Anárion tries to rouse him, but it is futile. Amandil mostly leaves him be, trusting that he will find his own path in his own time. 

On the seventh day, he is sitting on the terrace, his breakfast untouched before him, shivering slightly, for it is a crisp morning and he has neglected to put on a cloak, when a servant comes to him. Elendil notices absently that the man is pale, almost as if he has seen a ghost. 

“There is a rider here from Armenalos, my Lord. He looks to be in quite a state and is asking for food and water.” 

Elendil stiffens at this, finally rousing himself from his reverie. Is this it? Has he been discovered by the Kingmen at last? 

“Is my father —”

“Out in the city with Master Anárion.” 

Elendil sighs. “Very well. Bring this rider inside. See to it that he has all he needs, so long as he will leave his weapon at the door, and send word to my father if you can. I had better make myself scarce while our visitor is here.”

He is about to depart when the servant speaks again. “My Lord, I think perhaps you will want to see this particular visitor for yourself.” 

He allows himself to be led through the house to the courtyard. The rider stands caressing the neck of his horse, which is steaming in the chill air. Then he turns and all the blood rushes inwards to Elendil’s heart. For the second time in as many weeks he feels as though he has been physically struck. For a moment, he stands transfixed, and then with a broken cry he stumbles forwards towards Isildur, who sways on unsteady legs and then collapses into his father’s arms. They kneel together in the dust, Elendil alternately clasping his son to his breast and holding his face in his hands to look at him, as if to ascertain that, yes, it truly is him, he really is here. “My boy,” he murmurs through his tears. “My boy, my boy, my boy…” 

“Father,” says Isildur, voice parched and cracked. How long has he ridden without rest or water? “You are in danger.” 

He struggles to stand but his strength gives out, and so Elendil scoops him up in his arms and carries him towards the house, giving instructions over his shoulder to the servant who has been awkwardly standing by to tend to the horse. He has a thousand questions, but there will be time for them later. Now, he carries Isildur to the nearest guestroom and settles him on the bed, propped up against the cushions. He sends for food and water and, when it arrives, sits on the side of the bed and feeds his son carefully like he did when he was small. 

“Can it really be you?” Elendil asks once he has finished eating. “And can you ever forgive me for leaving you behind?”

“You thought I was dead,” Isildur says, voice still scratchy and only a little louder than a whisper. “And you had your duty, to the Queen, to our people, to those poor innocents in the Southlands. I think I understand a little better what that means now, Father. So please, do not blame yourself. I do not reproach you.”

“You have grown into a fine man, Son. I can scarcely believe that I have been so blessed.” 

At length Elendil hears a commotion outside and then footsteps running through the house. Anárion comes tumbling into the room like an excitable pup. “Isildur!” he cries, rushing to the bed, taking his brother’s hand and then dropping it again, kissing his brow, turning to embrace his father, practically levitating with joy. “Oh this is wondrous! You must tell us everything. Not now of course, but as soon as you are better. I want to hear about all the monsters you have slain in Middle Earth. You are like a proper hero now out of the old tales.” 

Amandil is less demonstrative but Elendil sees that his father’s eyes are shining where he stands in the doorway watching the reunion. Isildur looks exhausted and Elendil has half a mind to usher everyone out of the room so that he can get some sleep but as he moves to rise his son speaks, voice stronger than before.

“I am afraid the tales of my great deeds might have to wait for another time Nár,” he tells his brother, “but Father, I must give you the message I came with before I rest. It is important. Eärien sent me hither with tidings from Armenalos. The King plans to attack this city in a matter of weeks and to capture you and Grandfather if he can.” 

This is a lot to take in at once. “Eärien sent you!?” is the first thing Elendil asks. “How did you leave her Isildur? Is she safe?”

“I hope so,” Isildur answers. “She was safe when I left her but she took quite a risk to get this news to you. I tried to persuade her to come with me but she would not. You know how stubborn she can be.”

“Stubborn and brave,” Elendil says. “And how did she come by this news? Is it common knowledge in the city or is your sister still so much in the King’s confidence that he shares his military strategy with her.”

“She is still loyal to him, more or less, but this news came from another source. It was Tar-Miriel who told her. It seems that she tried to write to you about it in the spring but her letter was intercepted by Pharazôn. Eärien tells me that he threatened to slay the servant girl who carried the letter if the Queen did not marry him. She only said yes to save that young woman’s life.” 

He says the last part quite deliberately and takes his father’s hand as he does so, as though he knows what this will mean to him. And now Elendil understands Anárion a little better because suddenly it is he who wants to raise an army and go charging into Armenalos, heedless of the consequences. Yet he knows they do not have the forces to overthrow Pharazôn, not yet at least. They would never get close enough to the palace to rescue her, and many would die in the attempt. He feels the full weight of his responsibility to the people of Andunië. They are in grave danger and it is his duty to protect them. If Miriel can sacrifice her own happiness in the service of her people, so can he. It is time for him to put aside the fugitive and become the leader she believes him to be. 

“Get some rest, Son,” he tells Isildur. “Tomorrow, we shall make plans.” 

****

They have decided to fall back to Rómenna. It is smaller than Andunië but much more defensible, guarded by natural sea cliffs and the curve of the mountains of Hyarrostar. It is already known to be a stronghold of the Faithful on the eastern side of the island, and will be a better base from which to launch an assault on the capital or, perhaps more likely, to set sail across the sea for Middle Earth. It takes a few weeks to make the final preparations and there is much grief and sorrow in the city as word spreads that the Faithful must leave it. The Tower Guard is on constant lookout for any sign of an approaching army but the days wane and midwinter approaches and still the King's forces do not come. 

The night before they are due to depart, Elendil sits with his father in his study. 

“How is it, Father, that you have always kept your faith so strong?” he asks Amandil. It is a question he has been meaning to put to him for some time, and their last night in their ancestral home seems as good a time as any. 

“There is no great secret to it that I can impart to you, Elendil. I have faith in the same way that a bird has flight or the sea has tides. It is simply a part of my being. In truth, there is nothing so very admirable in it. Would you admire a fish for swimming? No, I have always thought that it is those like you, who doubt indeed but still choose the path of the Faithful, who are deserving of the highest praise, for you have looked darkness in the face and chosen light instead.”

“I hope never to doubt again,” Elendil says.

“I trust that if you doubt, you shall overcome it.” 

After a moment’s pause, Amandil continues. “I will not sail with you tomorrow, Son,” he says quietly, perfectly calm. 

“What do you mean!?” Elendil asks him, shocked. “Father, you cannot stay here.”

“I do not intend to. A great storm is coming. We both know it. Your Queen saw it in the palantir. It will be a cataclysm far greater than the King’s assault upon our city, like to the one which sunk whole continents beneath the sea at the end of the War of Wrath. And even the great destruction of that war might have been worse had Eärendil, our forefather, not sailed West and begged the Valar for aid. Tomorrow I mean to follow him, to come if I can to the Blessed Realm, and to make a final plea on behalf of the greatest of the kingdoms of men, before she is lost forever.”

Elendil is stunned into silence. His father takes a casket from one of the cabinets and unlocks it. He pulls out a ring, a sword, and a white jewel bound in a circlet of silver filigree. 

“The jewel of Silmariën, daughter of Tar-Elendil, Narsil, the red and white flame, forged in the deeps of time by Telchar, greatest of the Dwarven-smiths of Nogrod, and the ring of Barahir, made by the Noldor in Valinor and saved from the wreckage of Beleriand by Elwing, mother of Elros Tar-Minyatur. These are the heirlooms of our house, my Son. Take them, guard them, and carry them with you into the new kingdom, and may the grace of the Valar go with you.”

****

In the morning, the ships put out to sea. Nine follow the line of the coast, bearing north around the point towards Forostar, but one speeds out alone, straight as an arrow into the West, the morning sun gleaming on its white sails. Elendil watches until the ship is nothing more than a shining point of light on the far horizon.  

He never sees his father again.

Chapter Text

True to his word, Pharazôn takes back Andunië on the last day of the year. He tells Miriel nothing, except that the campaign was successful in capturing the city, leaving her hoping against hope that the fact she has not yet been forced to be present at the public execution of Elendil and his father means that they escaped in time. Rumours swirl that the city was mostly empty by the time of the arrival of the King’s forces, that those who remained gladly welcomed the Kingsmen and did homage to them, and that the remnant of the Faithful, who had not already fled to Middle Earth, have settled in Rómenna, but no one seems quite sure whether the family of Amandil are amongst them. 

It is several weeks until Eärien is able to seize upon an opportunity to tell Miriel the truth of the matter. A banquet has been arranged to honour the returning troops — those who are not still stationed in the West of the island — and afterwards there is music and dancing in the great hall. The King has left her seated on a divan at the side of the hall while he greets his subjects. She can picture him in her mind’s eye, moving amongst them, shaking hands and clapping shoulders, smiling into their faces and noting all the while which seem to be the most enthusiastic supporters of his cause and which he will need to keep a closer eye upon. If he is disappointed with the outcome of the offensive, he has not let on. 

As the band strikes up to play another set she feels someone sit beside her and then Eärien speaks in a low voice, scarcely loud enough to be heard above the music. “Isildur carried your message. I do not know where they are, but they were not in the city when the King’s forces arrived.” 

Miriel keeps looking straight ahead, trying not to let her relief show upon her face. She does not know who may be nearby so she asks Eärien carefully “are there many guests in the hall dancing this evening?”

Luckily Eärien comprehends her meaning at once and answers “none that are near enough to hear if you keep your voice down.”

“Then thank you, Eärien,” Miriel says. “For telling me this news, which gladdens my heart, and for all that you have done to bring it about. Are you safe? The King has not blamed you for your family’s flight?”

“No. If he suspects my part in it, he does not show it.”

“That is well. You have done a brave and noble thing.”

Eärien sighs, as if she is not quite sure of the truth of Miriel’s words. Then, after a moment of silence, she says “I am to be married to Prince Kemen.”

Whatever Miriel had expected her to say next, it was not this. Forgetting herself for a moment she turns abruptly towards her companion. 

“How did this happen?” she asks, fighting not to let her agitation register in her voice. 

“He asked me after he returned from Andunië, and I accepted him.” Eärien’s voice is flat and emotionless and Miriel’s heart suddenly aches for her. 

“Is this truly what you want Eärien?” she tries. 

“It is what I have chosen,” Eärien says. Miriel does not point out that that is not the same thing at all. 

****

Eärien marries Kemen in the spring and moves into the palace. Miriel is still deeply uneasy at the decision she has made, but she is pleased to have Eärien with her more often. Not that she is called that any longer. Pharazôn has changed her name, as well as Miriel’s own. She is Zimraphel now and Eärien is Azruphel. Their true names have been stolen from them, outlawed along with the rest of the ancient tongue. For the most part they do not call one another by name at all any more when they are in public, sticking instead to bland endearments. It is less painful that way. 

Pharazôn is increasingly absent from Armenalos, first establishing his new stronghold in the West and then, in the summer, departing with a large army for a campaign in Middle Earth. He leaves behind a permanent guard on the land route to Rómenna, lest the Faithful try any assault upon the capital in his absence. The sea route is harder to block off completely, but there are watchtowers aplenty between Rómenna and Armenalos on either side of the estuary and any ship of the Faithful which tries to sail up-river will have to make it past the trebuchets of the garrisons stationed there.  

Kemen sets sail with his father. This leaves Miriel and Eärien able to keep one another company more freely. They no longer keep secrets from each other. Eärien has told her now of all the circumstances surrounding Isildur’s departure and how he left bearing the stolen fruit of the White Tree. 

“I have never known it to bear fruit before,” she wonders to Miriel. 

“Nor I,” says Miriel. “It is almost as if it knew…”  

They walk in the gardens most days, often in silence, but sometimes in conversation. Eärien describes her design for a new mausoleum. Its stone dome is due to be made of white marble to match the White Tree. She completed the design before her marriage, while she was still working as a guild member. She misses it, Miriel soon realises. Misses having a purpose. There is a restlessness in her that seeps into their conversations with one another. Eärien’s disillusionment and her frustration are plain in every word she speaks, even when the words themselves are benign. Unlike her father and her brother, Eärien is a natural pragmatist, but even she needs something to believe in. 

She has softened immeasurably towards Miriel herself. She no longer prickles when Miriel calls her a dear friend. They do not speak of Elendil often, but every now and again, when she is sure they are out of earshot of the palace guards, Eärien will tell Miriel stories of her childhood in the West, before she lost her mother. Yearning tales of joyful summers spent together in her grandfather’s house, and silly tales of childish pranks that Isildur and Anárion would play upon one another, that make Miriel laugh for the first time in she knows not how long. Despite her captivity, despite the wars, despite everything, it is still the closest thing to peace Miriel has known since her father died. 

Or it would be were it not for the dreams. Over and over again she dreams of smoke issuing from a black temple and of a man clad all in black emerging from a Numenorian ship. It is Halbrand and yet not. His hair is golden and his eyes are black pools.

****

Pharazôn returns in the autumn and word runs through the city like wildfire that Sauron himself is the King’s prisoner. 

“Is it true?” Miriel asks one of her attendants, on the evening of the King’s return. 

“Yes my Lady,” the woman says. “I saw them disembark with my own eyes, the King in all his majesty and the prisoner in chains. I must say, he does not look so very frightening, from a distance at least, for all that he does look a bit elf-like with all that golden hair and those pointed ears.”

Miriel starts. “Golden hair and clad all in black?” she asks sharply. 

“Aye, my Lady,” says the maid, sounding puzzled at the intensity of the question.

At last it clicks into place in Miriel's mind. Her dreams, Halbrand’s true identity, the source of that strange rumour that she had allied herself with Sauron and been aided by him in her sea trial, and how Pharazôn had put the pieces together so quickly. There is only one way he could possibly have learned that the Southlander was the Enemy in disguise. She is certain even Galadriel herself did not know. 

All of a sudden she is furious. What a liar he is! What a hypocrite! Trembling with anger she makes her way with as much haste as she can manage to the Old Tower. The door at the base of the winding staircase is unlocked. She has not been here since before her ill-fated coronation but her feet remember the steps like it was yesterday. Up and up and up to the very highest room in the tower. 

“You used the palantir!” she cries, bursting into the chamber where she knows she will find him, and it.

“Zimraphel, good evening,” Pharazôn says carefully. “What seems to have exercised you so? Why, I could almost swear that you —”

“Enough!” For once it is she who interrupts him. “Enough of the lies and the dissembling. For once I would ask you a question and have you answer it, Pharazôn. Halbrand is the Enemy is he not? Like a fool I have only just worked it out, but it seems that you have known for years, ever since you first imprisoned me. So tell me truly, have you looked into that palantir?”

“Is it not the part of any ruler to use all the tools at his disposal in the service of his people?” he answers.

She laughs in his face then. 

“You know nothing of service. You speak as though you have ever placed our people above yourself with a single action you have taken or a single word out of your mouth. After you usurped me, I comforted myself with the thought that it was the will of the Valar that you rule in my stead. I believed you had principles, different from mine but truly held. And now you have the nerve not only to use the palantir, which you deposed me for possessing, but to use it to bring the Great Deceiver willingly back into our midst once more. All that time I spent thinking that your kingship might have been part of the path to save our land from destruction, and all the while you were charting a course straight into the jaws of that same ruin. Oh I have been so foolish!”

“I warn you Zimraphel,” he says, voice low and full of menace. “Think before you speak again.”

There is terrible danger in forging ahead. Miriel knows it. But rage has made her reckless. She must speak the truth, even if she dies for it. 

“You have set the downfall of our island in motion by bringing him here. If you think you can chain him then you are a fool. It is you who shall be his prisoner erelong. He will deceive and betray you, just as he did the Lady Galadriel. He will destroy you, Pharazôn and Numenor with you!”

He slaps her then, right across the face, all his usual restraint gone. He growls like some kind of wild animal and Miriel feels ice-cold fear pool in her stomach. Cheek still smarting from the blow she tries to back away from him towards the door to the chamber but she trips and stumbles and then in an instant he is upon her. His hand closes around her throat, hard enough to bruise, as he pushes her to the ground. Miriel squirms beneath him, struggling to breathe freely, clawing ineffectually at his arms and shoulders. When he releases her neck she takes great shuddering gasping breaths, but his assault is not over. 

With one hand he pins both her wrists above her head while the other hikes her skirts up around her waist. Pulling her undergarments to one side, he shoves three fingers inside her roughly and tears a stifled sob from her throat. She screws her eyes shut and grits her teeth against the pain. 

She does not scream. No one would hear her, and if they did they would not come. Everyone in the city knows this tower is out of bounds to all but the King. She does not plead with him to stop, because she knows he will not. She feels his hot breath on her face, feels the heavy jut of his cock against her inner thigh as he lines himself up. She thinks she might be sick. She thinks he might kill her. 

“I saved this kingdom,” he hisses in her ear as he breaches her. “I tore it out of the feckless, apathetic degeneracy of your father’s reign. I lifted it up out of the filth, and the mire, and the long years of ruin and defeat. I made it glorious, and mighty, and feared by all the world. I mastered Numenor, and Middle Earth, and Sauron himself, and by the stars Zimraphel, I shall master you as well!”

He punctuates each sentence with savage punishing thrusts until he spills with a grunt inside her. Then without another word he gets up, strides across the room and slams the door behind him, leaving her alone on the cold stone floor.  

Chapter Text

They are building her dome but it is to be made out of black marble. Zigur says it is to be a temple, not a mausoleum. 

She barely sees Kemen now. He is closeted with Zigur all the time. He has taken to wearing a ring that Zigur gave him as a gift. It is a beautiful thing; golden like Zigur himself. 

It was common knowledge from Armenalos to Andunië, or Adûn as it is now called, that the prisoner Sauron was brought back from Middle Earth as captive by Ar-Pharazôn the Glorious. But now the memory of his coming feels hazy somehow. It is as though the people of Numenor have forgotten that Zigur was not always their guest. Sometimes Eärien finds it hard to remember his arrival too. 

She has not seen Miriel for many months. How many? She finds she cannot tell. She misses her terribly. A part of her recognises that it is strange, for Miriel to have suddenly stopped joining her in her daily walks without any explanation. Perhaps something really is amiss. But her doubts feel intangible and hazy, liable to be blown away on the warm summer breeze. 

****

The dome is complete. It took a year to build, or so she thinks. Time remains liquid and hard to pin down. One day, soon after the final stone has been laid, Kemen summons her to the council chamber and she finds herself, abruptly, face to face with Zigur for the first time. 

“I wished to thank you, Azruphel, for designing our great temple,” he says, voice soft and mellifluous. He cups her chin with fingers which feel like ice and fire at the same time. She looks up into his fathomless eyes and feels as though she might drown in them. 

“Your work will be rewarded in the fullness of time,” he tells her. It feels less like a promise than a threat. 

****

It is winter. Smoke rises towards the Meneltarma, charred and bitter. When word had first reached her that they were sacrificing the Faithful in the Temple of Melkor she had not believed it. Surely the King would not… Then one evening as she walked in the palace gardens she had smelled the smoke and the stench of death and realised it was true. She had knelt on the wet grass and thrown up. 

Now the sacrifices are each month at full moon. 

She feels as though she is living in a waking nightmare. Only the acrid smell of burning flesh convinces her that she is, indeed, awake. 

Ar-Pharazôn and Zigur hold court together after each sacrifice. Eärien tries not to attend unless Kemen specifically demands it. When she does, she sees a hungry look on Ar-Pharazôn’s face when he turns towards Zigur. It is a look she has never seen him direct towards anyone else, certainly not towards his absent Queen. 

It is said the King stalks the passages of the palace late at night as though pursuing an unseen foe. Or perhaps he is the one being pursued. Eärien rarely sees him at close quarters these days but when she does she notices there are dark circles under his eyes. 

Her maid tells her that he has been seen climbing the stairs of the Old Tower, which was locked up when Tar-Palantir died. 

****

The King is mustering a great army in Adûn.  Kemen will not tell her what its purpose is but Armenalos is gradually being emptied of all those trained to wield a blade.

When she was an advisor to the King she would surely have been told, she thinks. Even as a guild member or an apprentice, she might have gone about the city and heard the rumours. But now she feels as much an ornament as the ring on Kemen’s finger, as much a prisoner as Miriel. And where is Miriel? 

In a moment of clarity one day in the early spring, Earien goes to visit her rooms. She wonders that she had never tried it until now. But they are empty. The furniture is dusty and the maids all seem to have been dismissed. She starts to feel a sense of panic clawing its way up her throat but then the bell begins to ring for daily prayers at the temple and she is suddenly disorientated and can hardly remember why she is here. 

****

They cut down the White Tree to feed the fires at the temple. Eärien weeps until her eyes and throat are raw. 

****

The King and his army set sail on midsummer’s day. Kemen stays behind. He never strays far from Zigur’s side these days. 

That night there is a full moon and Earien locks her chamber door and draws the heavy curtains so that she will not smell the smoke from the temple or hear the awful cries. 

The weeks tick by with no word, and she feels like she is losing her mind. 

When the moon waxes to fullness once more, she sends word to Kemen begging him to come to her. He does so but his eyes seem glassy and faraway, like he is only half present in the room with her. 

“Please,” she begs, “please tell me where your father and his army are going.”

“Why, to conquer Valinor of course” says Kemen, voice dreamy, as though it is the most natural thing in the world.

It is no use. She must find Miriel.

****

“Let me pass”

The guard at the doorway of the Old Tower will not allow her through. Even in her confused state, Eärien knows with bone-deep certainty that she will find Miriel in the tower if only she can get in. 

“I am sorry, my Lady, I have strict orders from the King that no one is allowed inside.”

“I am the Princess Azruphel, and I demand to be granted entry.”

Still he stands in her path, though Eärien thinks that perhaps he looks like he would rather not. There is one card left for her to play. She draws herself up to her full height, looks him straight in the eyes and in the coldest, haughtiest voice she can muster she says “I come on urgent business from Zigur.”

The young man stands aside.

Eärien ascends the spiral staircase and enters the chamber which used to be the old King’s. She remembers it from the day when he warned her about the palantir. Miriel is lying now in the same bed. At the sound of the door she flinches away, but then almost as suddenly she turns her face towards the doorway, as if trying to see. 

“Wait, you are not he. But I recognise your footsteps. Eärien? Can it be you?” 

“Yes, yes it is me,” she answers wide-eyed with dismay as she takes in the sight before her. Miriel is painfully thin, her cheeks gaunt, her arms, which lie outside the coverlet, are covered in fading bruises and there seems to be dried blood upon her temple. She looks feverish too. Crossing the room in a rush, Eärien drops to her knees beside the bed. She takes Miriel’s hand in one of her own and gently places the other on her burning brow. 

“Did the King do this to you?” she asks, dreading the answer she knows will follow. 

“He did,” Miriel says simply. 

“How often has he hurt you?”

“It is usually in the days after a sacrifice. The span of his years is lessening and it terrifies him. Sauron has deceived him into believing that the sacrifices will grant him longer life.” Eärien starts at the name of Sauron. It seems so long since she has heard it. It takes her a moment to realise that Miriel is speaking of Zigur. 

Miriel continues. “Each time Pharazôn notices a new line upon his brow he knows that the sacrifices have not worked, and I become the object upon which he vents his anger. I wonder that he has not killed me yet. The first time he raped me I lay awake all night and prayed that I would not conceive. Now I eat as little of the food they bring me as will keep me alive. I ought to be less fertile this way. It seems it has worked, for I am not with child.”

She says it so calmly, in such a matter of fact tone, and Eärien’s heart cracks into pieces. How long has Miriel been here, she wonders? Has it been all those months since Zigur — no Sauron’s — arrival? All the time that Eärien has been walking through life in the palace below as if in a dream? Has it been years? The full horror is almost too much for her to comprehend and she is wracked with guilt that she cannot even seem to remember when she last saw the Queen. 

“May I help you wash?” she asks and Miriel nods her assent. Gingerly, Eärien helps her sit up and moves the washstand over so it is beside the bed. She washes her carefully, as though she is tending to an infant. Once Miriel is clean, she dresses her in a clean white dress — it is the only one she can find in the wardrobe — and tries not to think how much it looks like a shroud. She strokes Miriel’s hair tenderly, wishing she could simply sit with her awhile, but she is here for a reason and she must disclose why she has come. 

“The King has sailed for Valinor to make war on the Valar!” In the end it comes out all in a rush. “They set sail a month ago.” 

“So it is time at last.” Miriel does not seem surprised. 

“What do you mean?” Eärien asks.

“For years, each time I looked in the Palantir, I would see a great wave overwhelming our island. I never knew whether it was a vision of what would be or only what might be, if we chose the wrong path. I guess it scarcely matters now.”

“Forgive me,” Eärien sobs. “You were right about all of it. Oh, I have been so blind! Now please, tell me what to do.”

As weak as she is, Miriel’s voice is still clear and commanding as she says, “You must leave the city. Find your brothers and your father in Rómenna, if they have not already departed for Middle Earth. Tell them they must set sail at once. If they are already gone, gather as many of our people as you can and follow them on whatever ship will bear you. The wave will be here soon. Our island cannot now be saved but perhaps some of its people yet can be. Your father has served faithfully in Numenor but he must lead in exile, and he will need you too, my dear friend.”

“Come with me,” Eärien begs her. “He needs you too, and so do I. I can find a way to smuggle you out of the tower. I can — ” 

But Miriel shakes her head. 

“No my dear, this is a journey you must take alone, for you must make haste, and I cannot. I have not the strength to travel, and it would increase the risk of you being caught tenfold if we were to try. If you do not reach Rómenna with all possible speed, the doom of Eru may arrive before you do and all will be lost. There are too many lives at stake for you to delay.”  

“But it is not fair!” Eärien cries. She knows she sounds petulant but she cannot help it. The sheer wrongness of leaving Miriel here to succumb to her fever or drown is too much for her. 

“Many tales seem unfair to those who live through them,” says Miriel. “But the end of this tale I have long foreseen and, though I hoped for a time to avert it, I have made my peace with my part in it. I am glad to have heard a kind voice one more time, though, before I depart. Now, you must go, but first will you help me to stand?”

Eärien raises her gently and with one of Miriel’s arms about her shoulder they make their slow progress across the landing to the room next door. It is the room where the palantir sits on its stone plinth. Eärien has been here once before, long ago, and she remembers that day and all that came after it with bitter shame. Miriel points in the direction of the stone. 

“You must take it. Your father will have need of it in the new kingdom.” Now at last Eärien hears the emotion in her voice as she says "Tell him I am sorry, and that wherever it is I am going, I will carry a piece of him with me.”

Then Eärien kisses her cheek and, wiping away her own tears so the guard will not see them, she departs. 

Chapter Text

Miriel does not die from her fever. She almost hopes to, but it is as if a part of her is stubbornly clinging to life as long as Numenor endures. As though her body is tethered to the kingdom — bruised and broken as it is — and her spirit can only leave it when the island is no more. 

For several days and nights she drifts in and out of delirium. Someone must bring her food and water during this time but she does not know them. She seems to see spectral figures standing at the foot of her bed. Most often it is her father watching her. He mouths silent words, which she cannot make out. A message? Or a warning? She does not know. Sometimes it is the Lady Galadriel, gaze intense and reproachful. You did not come, she seems to say. You promised you would return to aid us and then you did not come. 

Worst of all are the visions of Sauron, with his shining hair and those incomprehensible eyes. She feels herself sink into his abyssal gaze, hears his voice in her mind, silken and hypnotic. I can save you, it says. I can lift you up and bear you across the sea. I can restore your sight and make you whole again. Your husband is a fool, but you — you are precious. You are a jewel to be treasured, more beautiful than silver or ivory or pearls. Let yourself be worshipped. 

“Give yourself to me.”  

The last part almost sounds as though he really is present in the room with her. 

“No!” Miriel cries out. “Begone from this place, and from my mind!” 

On the seventh night her fever breaks, and she awakes damp with sweat but lucid, staring into the blank darkness in which she lies, alone. Trapped in her body. Trapped in the tower. Trapped in a nightmare from which there is no waking. 

Now at last the great weight of despair, which she has been holding off for years, threatens to overwhelm her. The pull of utter hopelessness, drawing her down and down and into its depths. All is lost and soon she shall be lost with it, and Numenor, high and bright and beautiful, will be nothing more than a memory, a cautionary tale for the men of Middle Earth.   

Please, she begs silently, to whom she does not know. There must be something more than darkness. Please, show me that this shadow is not all that there is. 

Then, as if in answer to her plea, a memory from her childhood surfaces unbidden. It was not long after her mother died; her first real taste of grief. Her father had taken her to Noirinan, the Valley of the Tombs, to see her mother laid to rest and, after the ceremony, the two of them had walked on alone up the winding path towards the summit of the Meneltarma, until they reached the hallowed place where prayers to Eru Ilúvatar used to be uttered. Sacred as it was, this place was unadorned and open to the sky. 

There, they sat together on a rock, and her father told her the story of how, after the destruction of the Two Trees in Valinor, the Vala Yavanna had sung a lament of such surpassing beauty that Telperion had put forth one last silver flower and Laurelin one last fire-gold fruit. From that flower and fruit, the Valar had fashioned the moon and the sun and, setting them in celestial vessels, had placed them on high to chart their course across the sky until the world is made anew, forever out of Morgoth’s reach. 

“You see Miriel, that even after great sorrow, light and beauty can still be found,” her father had said. 

Now she contemplates that fruit, which became the sun itself, and a resolution forms within her. 

No, Miriel thinks, she will not die here.

She feels a sudden desperate yearning to be beneath the open sky one last time. The storm has already started. There is thunder the like of which she has never known. It rolls and crashes and echoes off the Meneltarma. Lightening so bright that she can see the flashes in her sightless eyes. And above it all the endless howling wind. From her tower, Miriel hears the ringing of the alarm bells in the city below. She supposes the storm must look as fearsome as it sounds. 

With great difficulty she rises from her bed, gropes her way towards the wardrobe to find the single pair of shoes within and then, with faltering steps, crosses the room and makes her halting way down the spiral staircase. She expects to be stopped at the door to the tower, but the guards seem to have abandoned their posts. Perhaps they have fled to the harbour or away from the wild sea and into the mountains. She knows not. She only knows that this is her one chance to free herself from her long captivity. She descends through deserted courtyards and passages as swiftly as she is able, and then at last she steps out of the palace gates and into the city beyond. 

As she moves through the city towards the Meneltarma, she hears the sound of screams and falling masonry. The very ground beneath her feet seems to shudder and tremble. She has not been this way for many years. She has not even set foot outside the Old Tower in… she knows not how long. By rights, this journey ought to be impossible in her blind and weakened state, but it is as if some unknown force is guiding her steps, steering her towards that high and sacred place, guarding her until she makes it there once more. 

Another mighty will there is too, brooding and malevolent. It whispers the counsel of despair into her ear. Give up, it says. It is futile. Just lie down and sleep. But Miriel forges on. 

On and on she goes until the ground starts to rise more steeply and she knows that her feet have carried her of their own volition to the base of the road up the mountain. She struggles to catch her breath as she walks straight into the raging wind out of the West, spending the last of her strength to reach the summit in time. She walks for hours until she is parched with thirst and so exhausted that she can barely set one bleeding and blistered foot in front of the other, driven onwards by force of will alone.

Then, at last, the ground levels out once more and, all of a sudden, her shin collides sharply with a large boulder and she realises she has made it. She is in the place of Eru, where her father first brought her as a child. Having made it here and with the last of her strength gone, she crumples to the ground, leaning her back against the rock, face turned upwards towards the sky.  

For one solitary moment, she is at perfect peace. Then, somewhere in the far distance, she feels rather than hears a great echoing boom, which seems to come from inside the very bowels of the earth, and afterwards there is a sound like the wailing of a thousand voices, all crying out in fear and anguish, born hither on the wild wind across the sea. She knows then that Pharazôn has come indeed to the Blessed Realm, and has set foot upon the shores of Aman and looked upon the shining peak of Taniquetil and despaired.

Chapter Text

Rómenna is not exactly under siege. Some provisions still arrive by sea, but it is a risky business sailing beyond the sea cliffs which mark the limits of the bay. Fishing within the harbour is safer and a fleet of small boats and coracles have been built for exactly that purpose, lightweight and keelless to avoid running aground in shallow water. They grow what they can in small kitchen gardens and on scraps of fertile land just beyond the city walls. But nothing makes its way in by road, thanks to the King’s garrison, who guard the mountain pass from Armenalos. Supplies are running lower than they would like, but they are not at risk of starvation. Not yet. 

Elendil’s family have taken up residence in what used to be the city hall. There were many unoccupied homes they might have used when they arrived, but there was scarcely ever a time when they did not have some business or other to transact with the people of Rómenna or the Faithful who followed them from Andunië, and it was easier simply to move into the rooms above the hall itself. Isildur and Anárion have grown from youths into men, and are beloved of their people. Anárion has an especially loyal following among the younger members of the old Tower Guard of Andunië and Isildur among those who served in the Sea Guard in Armenalos before Pharazôn stripped them of their rank.

Those of the Faithful who cannot fight, or fish, or farm, or rig a ship, or forge a blade, have mostly sailed for Middle Earth by now, on small ships with plain sails, so as not to draw the King's attention. Even with the dwindling population of the city, the hall is busy almost all the time. Bereg, now one of Elendil's most trusted lieutenants, comes to him most days to let him know how matters fare in the city and beyond its walls, whether ships bearing the King’s banner have been spied off-shore and when their own boats have made it safe to harbour with fresh supplies. When he is detained he sends Baranor in his stead. Despite the constant activity there is a sense of anticipation and foreboding growing in Rómenna, as if the city is holding its breath, waiting.  

One evening, as Elendil sits alone in one of the rooms off to the side of the hall, taking stock of their dwindling grain supplies, Baranor comes to him, seeming somewhat flustered. 

“My Lord, there is a lady here arrived from Armenalos and asking to see you. She says that she is the Princess Azruphel. She is unarmed. I asked her her business but she would only say that she must speak with you directly. What shall I say to her?”

“Azruphel?” Elendil asks, quickly reckoning the translation in his head. Could it be? “Bring her in,” he tells Baranor. Then he waits with baited breath.  

When Eärien does indeed appear she looks uncertain of her reception, her expression flitting between defiance and vulnerability as she hovers by the door. The guilt of it pierces his heart, that he has ever given her cause to think she would not find a welcome with him. It is time to remedy that. Without a word, Elendil strides across the room and pulls his daughter into a warm embrace. She gives a little “oh!” of surprise, then lets out a shaky breath and allows herself to be held. 

“I have missed you,” he tells her earnestly after a while. “However did you make it past the guard on the city?” 

“By hiding in plain sight. I simply wore my finest cloak and gown, saddled my mare and rode on through, daring any of them to challenge the Princess Azruphel when she said she came on business from the King. My brothers? Are they —” 

“Both safe,” Elendil reassures her. He shakes his head and lets out a low whistle, not sure if he is more impressed or horrified at her bold strategy for entering the city. “So Baranor was right, you truly are a princess now?”

“To my shame, I am. I have been married to Kemen for a little over two years. But Father, there is no time for that now. Pharazôn has sailed for Valinor with a great army. He means to challenge the might of the Valar and to take immortality by force if he can, for he and Kemen are both utterly in thrall to Sauron. I managed to find Miriel in the Old Tower, where Pharazôn has  imprisoned her. She sent me hither with the message that the doom of Eru will soon arrive and that you must set sail for Middle Earth at once with as many of the Faithful as you can. She seemed to think the whole island is to be drowned. I begged her to come away with me, but she was so weak and sick, she said she could not travel. Forgive me Father. I tried to save her but I was too late. Oh, forgive me for everything!” 

Elendil is speechless for a moment. This is a great deal to take in all at once, not least the news that Sauron himself is in Armenalos. His heart stutters in his chest at the thought of Miriel, imprisoned and afflicted. But here too is his daughter, having made a perilous and lonely journey and evidently afraid that at any moment he might shun her. 

“Forgive you?” he answers at last. “Is it not I who ought to beg your forgiveness? For leaving you all alone with your grief. For leaving you in that place. You were crying out to me and I was deaf and blind to your sorrow. But, if you truly ask for my forgiveness, then it is freely given.” 

He embraces her again and kisses the top of her head like he used to when she was a child. “My dear girl,” he says. “My dear, brave girl… But now, we must make haste. When did the King sail for Valinor?”

“On midsummer’s day,” says Eärien. 

Elendil thinks back on the books and maps in his father’s study, reckons the distance, and then turns to Baranor. “Fetch Isildur and Anárion. We shall prepare for departure at once. Then go to your father and tell him that all such supplies as we have left in the city must be loaded onto the ships with all possible haste. We must be ready to weigh anchor at first light on the third day.” 

****

He sleeps fitfully for a few short hours that night. He dreams of Miriel, alone in her tower. More than once he wakes himself calling out her name. He feels torn in two. His heart tells him to go back for her, no matter what the cost. But, he chides himself, his duty is to their people. Can he really leave them in the very hour of doom? Can he leave Isildur and Anárion to lead them on to Middle Earth without him? Can he leave Eärien again, so soon after being reunited with her, to once more risk his life for Miriel’s sake?

At first light, he calls them to him. 

“I think I must go back for her,” he says. 

None of them need to ask him what he means. Isildur and Anárion look at him like he has lost his mind. 

“Father this is madness,” says Isildur. “Please, do not throw away your life so rashly. She would not want it.”

“He's right,” Anárion says. “And surely you cannot abandon the Faithful now. They need you. What good are me and Isil on our own without you? Think what Grandfather would say.”

But to his immense surprise, Eärien simply nods. As her brothers continue to plead with him to abandon this folly, she opens up the saddlebag she carries with her and takes out a round object wrapped in a dark cloth. 

“I forgot to give it to you last night,” she says, handing him the palantir. “She asked me to bring it to you. Here, take it. If it truly does reveal the future, then ask the Valar to show you what you must do.” 

Elendil looks at his daughter in stunned silence and then at the shrouded palantir in his hands. He has not touched it since the day of Miriel’s coronation, when all he saw was himself riding away from her. He is afraid of what it might show him this time.

He takes a few steps away from his children — last time he touched the thing it threw him across the room after all — and then removes the cloth and clasps the jet black stone in his hands. At first, he sees nothing but blank darkness. Then points of light emerge like distant stars, swirling in unfamiliar patterns. Finally the lights coalesce into a road, winding its way up a mountain. He sees the road from the perspective of one walking upon it, and unlike the last vision, he does not see himself. It is as if he walks in the body of another. At length the road opens out into a wide flat space, bounded by rocks and trees, beneath the very peak of what he now recognises as the Meneltarma. He recognises this place. It was a place of prayer in the reign of Tar-Palantir, consecrated to Eru Ilúvatar. For a moment he feels an overwhelming sense of longing, not of his own, to be in that wide open space beneath the sky. It is so intense that he sets the palantir down suddenly, gasping for breath. He covers it again quickly with the cloth. 

He knows that a seeing stone may show a man many things. Things that were, things that are, and some things that have not yet come to pass. Some, perhaps, that never will. No matter. He asked for a sign and it is given. It is enough. 

Knowing that what he is about to say will break their hearts, he turns to his children. “I cannot leave her behind again,” he says. 

****

The sun is sinking in the western sky when he sets out. He has given instructions to Bereg and bid him and Baranor farewell. He has bestowed the treasures of his house upon Isildur and Anárion — the jewel of Silmariën, the ring of Barahir, and Narsil. He shall have no need of them where he is going. The palantir he has entrusted to Eärien. 

“Do not wait for me,” he tells them before he leaves. “I aim to find a boat which will bear me and the Queen, and trust that fate will guide us back to your fleet. I believe that it will, but if I should fail, know that I shall leave this world as proud as a man may be of my brave children. Namárië.” 

His sons weep as they bid him goodbye, as though it truly is the last time. But Eärien, eyes dry and intense, says only, “we shall see you on board.” 

Taking only a flask of water and some meagre provisions with him, Elendil hastens to the harbour. Already there are sailors loading supplies onto skiffs to row out to the ships anchored offshore. He hails one young man, who is unloading the day’s catch from a coracle. 

“Sailor, what is your name?” 

“Balakân, my Lord,” says the young man, seeming a little shocked to be spoken to directly by the Lord of the Faithful. 

“How heavy is that boat Balakân?” Elendil asks. 

“Not so heavy, my Lord. It is only woven willow and tar. We try to make them light enough to carry up-river for freshwater fishing in the mountain lakes.” 

This is just what Elendil needs. “I am sorry to ask it of you, sailor,” he says, “but I am in desperate need of such a craft. The Queen’s life may depend upon it.”

Before he can even ask the question, the young man reaches down to untie the rope which fastens the coracle to the dock and places it in Elendil’s hands.

“Take it,” he says. “The Valar bless you, my Lord, and the Queen too.” 

Elendil claps him on the shoulder. “You are a good man Balakân,” he says.

Then without wasting another moment, he jumps into the coracle, pushes off from the dock and begins to paddle, leaving Balakân staring in wonder and bewilderment from the shore. 

He paddles from Rómenna to Armenalos, scarcely pausing for rest. His arms and shoulders burn with the exertion. It would have been faster to ride but he could not risk the road out of Rómenna, knowing the garrison remained in place when Eärien passed through and would surely cut him down if given the opportunity. Besides, he had no way of knowing whether he would have been able to secure a boat in Armenalos, let alone one light enough to carry up the mountain. 

It grows dark, then light, then dark again. The first night he is able to navigate by the stars but by the second, ominous storm clouds have rolled in and he must pray that he is still travelling in the right direction. He expects every moment to be spotted from one of the watch-towers that line the cliffs, but since no cries go up and no missiles rain down from the trebuchets mounted on the shore, he starts to suspect that most of the towers’ garrisons must have sailed with the King to Valinor. He sleeps in short bursts when the shoreline becomes hospitable enough for him to secure the boat so that it will not be carried away on the current, and the vegetation is dense enough to hide him. He chooses places where streams run out to sea so that he can refill his flask. The wind grows ever wilder as he goes, and his journey becomes ever more difficult, for he is travelling due west. 

At last, after several long and weary days, he spies the towers of the capital. He fears that he will be apprehended at once, as soon as he arrives in the harbour, but there is a wild commotion in the city and he is able to pass through the chaos unchallenged. And so he walks, through the city and up the winding mountain road towards the high place where prayers to Eru used to be uttered, carrying the coracle on his back. The screams and wails of the people below echo off the sides of the Meneltarma as he climbs. Huge storm clouds, shaped like eagles, hurl lightning bolts at the shuddering ground. It is madness. His rational mind knows it. And yet his heart is utterly calm. This is right.

He pauses once or twice to drink from mountain streams along the way but otherwise he does not stop, even as his back and neck and legs scream at him to set down his burden and rest. At last, he rounds the final flank of the mountain and sees a figure standing alone in the distance, white dress against warm brown skin, dark hair blowing freely in the wind. It has been nigh on four years since they parted, but he would know her anywhere. His weariness forgotten, he hurries towards her, heart hammering in his ears. He sees the figure sway and fall to the ground and a moment later feels the very earth quake and convulse beneath his feet. He redoubles his effort, almost running now. A great indistinct shape is moving on the western horizon, out over the sea. He must reach her before the wave.

Chapter Text

She is glad that she will be here when the wave takes her, and not a prisoner in the palace. She is afraid. How could she not be? But the crushing despair she felt, imprisoned in the tower, has lifted somewhat, out here in the open air. There is little enough left for her to hope for, and yet she chooses to hope. Not for herself — mostly not at least — but for those of her people who managed to escape in time. For the future they shall have in Middle Earth. 

The ground is still shaking beneath her. She knows the wave will be here soon; the culmination of every vision she has ever seen in the palantir. She wonders if perhaps her father might be waiting for her where she is going, and whether he will be disappointed in her failure or proud of her, for knowing what it is to see a thing through to the end. She hopes that she might see Elendil again, someday, in that unknowable place beyond the walls of the world. 

“Miriel!” As if in answer to her thought, she seems to hear him crying out, distant at first but getting closer. “Miriel!” 

It has been so long since she has been called by that name, longer still since she has heard the beloved voice which now calls to her. It must be a dream she thinks. Or else she is dying. Perhaps she is already dead.

“Miriel!” Closer still, accompanied by a thud as if something heavy has been dropped to the ground nearby. Logic tells her that the voice is but a phantom, another illusion conjured by a fevered mind. But the hands which grasp her shoulders and raise her from the ground feel real. She reaches out, oh so tentatively, and places a hand upon his chest, feels the wild beat of his heart against her fingers. She is afraid that any moment, the dream will blow away like smoke. 

“I am no dream,” he tells her. Had she uttered the thought out loud, or can he read the workings of her mind and soul? It matters not. He is warm and solid beneath her palms. With trembling fingers she reaches up, traces the contours of his face, the curve of his lip, the rough scratch of his beard, the lines on his brow — more of them now than when they parted. She opens her mouth to speak but no words come.

“Oh my darling, what have they done to you?” Elendil’s voice is thick with horror. He gathers her in his arms and holds her to his heart as the wind howls around them. 

She feels an almost hysterical laugh bubble up in her throat. He cannot be here. Has she not sacrificed enough to save him?  

“You should not be in this place!” she tells him desperately. She tries to push him away but she is barely strong enough to stand and he is unmoved. She sags in his arms and finds she must lean against him to keep from falling. 

“And yet this is the only place I wish to be,” he tells her. “The palantir brought me here. Your palantir.” 

“Do not trust it!” Her own vehemence shocks her. “It lies.”

“We both know that is not so,” he says gently. “Its truths may not always be clear at first, yet truths they are. I asked for a sign and it was given.”

“Elendil, this is a false portent. It is I who am doomed to die in the place, not you. You must lead our people into their long exile. Who will they follow if not their Lord? For your own sake, for theirs, and for mine I command you. Go!”

“You sent me away once before Miriel, and I obeyed. Because I honoured you as my Queen, even as I loved you as a woman. But this time I cannot obey. Against all hope, the Valar have led me back to you, and now no power in Arda will remove me willingly from your side. Besides, it is too late for me to flee, even if I wished it. The road to Rómenna is already impassable and the ships of the Faithful will have set sail by now.” 

After all she has endured, it is this which finally breaks her. She is wracked with grief. She collapses against him, hands balled into fists in the fabric of his cloak, though whether she is trying to push him away or pull him towards her she cannot tell. 

“I cannot bear it,” she sobs. “I feel as though I am killing you.”

“No! I have not come for us to die together,” he says, wiping away her tears. His hands cup her cheeks. “I mean for us to live,” he says fiercely. 

Miriel is desolate. “I swore to myself that I would not forsake this island, come what may.” 

“And you shall not forsake it. Here we stand at the Hallow of Eru Ilúvatar. If it is his will that we should go down with the island then we shall drown, and if it is his will that we should survive then he will deliver us.” 

Still holding her face in his hands, he leans his forehead against hers. His thumbs caress her cheeks. “Will you take one more leap of faith with me, Miriel?”

How can she refuse him now? Perhaps they were always fated to walk this path together, to whatever end. 

“Very well,” she says. 

He helps her climb into some kind of small wooden craft then. It has a rough-hewn plank for a low seat and he lashes her to it once she is seated, the rope fastened securely around her waist and, she supposes, around his own. He kneels beside her, arms about her, and Miriel clings to him, her arms around his neck. The coracle hardly feels sturdy enough to bear one person, let alone two, and certainly not in the face of what is to come. She cannot truly believe that it will weather the great wave but she tries to draw upon Elendil’s faith. 

“If we do not survive this, know that I do not regret my choice,” he tells her, “and that I have missed you every day that we have been apart.”

“And I you,” she says, weeping once more. 

She holds him tighter, tilts her head upwards, searching blindly until her lips meet his in one last desperate kiss.

“It is coming,” he says when at last they break apart, breathing hard. “Whatever happens, hold onto me.”  

The thunder rolls. The lightning rends the darkness before her eyes. Somewhere in the city below, Miriel thinks she can hear a wild laugh, powerful and dark and ancient. She hides her face against Elendil’s neck. Then the wave comes upon them and their cries are lost to the roaring wind. 

Chapter Text

At first Elendil is convinced he must be dead. His lungs are on fire. His eyes burn too if he tries to open them. Gradually he becomes aware of pain in all his limbs, but it is a dull ache. Nothing feels broken. 

With difficulty, he opens his eyes. They are lying in the bottom of the coracle, floating on the open sea, buffeted by the waves, but nothing like the wave. He supposes they must have been borne on the very crest of it from the slopes of the Meneltarma. The wind is still blowing wildly out of the West. Dark storm clouds lower above the boat. The ropes have all come loose, drifting out behind like the tentacles of the sea worm. The wooden seat has snapped in half. It is a miracle indeed that the storm did not rend their craft in two, or puncture its outer shell, or inundate it with water, and plunge it and them to the bottom of the sea. 

Miriel is in his arms. But, he realises with a creeping sense of dread, she is too still. She is not breathing. He sits up with a start, grasps her around her chest under her ribcage and squeezes. Thin. She is altogether too thin, and weakened from her many months’ confinement. Desperately he tries to force the water from her lungs, presses down on her chest and breathes into her mouth. 

He calls out to her. “Miriel, meleth nîn. Breathe my darling, please.” And then a whispered plea… “Come back to me." 

Nothing. There is no sound but the wind and the waves. 

He wonders how much grief one mortal body can withstand before it cracks. He is too late. He forsook his people in their hour of need and then he lost her anyway. He cradles her limp body in his lap and prays silently to every deity he can think of to bring her back to him or else to grant him one last mercy and let him follow her. The seconds tick by and every one seems to stretch out into eternity. Into a lifetime which he must somehow face without her. 

Then, wonder of wonders, he hears a cough. Miriel is coughing up water, gasping for air, and alive. He weeps and laughs and thanks Ilúvatar and all the powers in Arda that they have spared her.

“Elendil?” Her voice is hoarse but she is alive, alive, alive. 

“I am here,” he tells her through his tears, clutching her to his breast, as though defying the storm to take her from him. “Darling, I am here."

“I thought I had dreamt you,” she says. “Where are we?” 

Only now does Elendil truly look around to try to get his bearings. There is no sign of Numenor on the horizon in any direction but the sky is still too thundery to make out much. 

“On the open sea,” he answers her. “I am trying to spy the Meneltarma to work out exactly where we are.”

“You shall not see it,” Miriel says, voice infinitely sad. “It is gone down with the rest of the island and all the world is changed. I know it in my heart.”

They sit in silence for a time, until Miriel breaks it once again. 

“All those years, hoping to avert the disaster that I saw in the palantir, I never stopped to consider the possibility that I might fail and yet survive. It almost feels like an act of betrayal to go on living, when so much and so many have been lost. I scarcely know how to be without Numenor.”

Elendil’s heart aches to hear her speak this way. He grieves for all that has been lost, and he grieves that Miriel should take the burden of that loss upon herself. 

“No one could have striven harder, or been more loyal to our island than you,” he says. 

“But it was not enough. In the end, it was not enough.”

Elendil is familiar with guilt, including the guilt of having survived when others have not. He knows what it is to take the blame upon oneself and how little empty reassurances will do to heal that particular kind of hurt. So he does not try to tell her that she did not fail, when he knows she will not believe him. He simply takes her hand in his, twines their fingers together and holds tight. One thing, though, he does want her to hear. He hopes in time it might serve to lessen the weight of grief and regret that she carries. 

“Eärien rode into Rómenna some five or six nights ago. She carried your message to me, just as you instructed her. Before her arrival we had no idea of Pharazôn’s vainglorious quest. Many of the Faithful have sailed for Middle Earth these past few years but there were still hundreds, perhaps thousands, left in the city when your message arrived. Without it, we should not have known that our island’s doom was so near at hand and we should never have been ready to sail in time. Every man, woman and child who set sail in that final fleet owes you their life.”

She says nothing, but he sees a tear slide down her cheek and she tightens her grip on his hand. It emboldens him to continue.

“And before that, when we dwelt in Andunië, we would receive word of the King’s designs, which seemed to have been smuggled out of the palace somehow. The messages ceased around the time of your marriage. I did not make the connection at first, but it was you, was it not, striving to aid us even in your captivity?” 

“I had sent you away to keep you safe and so that you might become the leader of the Faithful that I knew you to be,” says Miriel. “I had to make sure that it was worth it.”

Elendil’s heart is so full that it feels ready to overflow. What a marvel she is. 

“Tar-Miriel, daughter of Tar-Palantir, you are the bravest soul I have ever known," he says. 

Hours pass. They drain the flask of fresh water which Elendil carries at his belt. He makes sure that Miriel takes most of it, for who knows how long it has been since she last had anything to drink. She rests in his arms, her head pillowed against his chest. Her face looks peaceful as he gazes down at her, eyes closed, lips parted just a little. He cannot quite believe that she is really here, in the flesh, and not only in her letters and his dreams.  

The sea around them remains blank and featureless, the clouds still so dense that Elendil cannot even tell what time of day it is from the location of the sun. He knows they must be travelling east, from the direction of the wind, but how they are ever to reunite with the fleet out of Rómenna he does not know. They may still die here, and yet he feels strangely calm. He thinks of his father, and wonders whether this is how he felt upon setting out alone into the West. 

After a long time — how long, Elendil does not know — he spies a dark shape moving across the surface of the water out in the distance ahead. At first he is afraid that it might be the sea worm, or something yet more terrible, but after a moment he sees it rise up into the sky on what are unmistakably the outstretched wings of a great bird. It can only be one of the eagles of Manwë, escaping from the peak of Sorontil, which now lies submerged beneath the waves, and flying out over the sea to the north. In that instant he resolves to follow it. 

Gently, he wakes Miriel from the doze she has fallen into and sets her down in the base of the boat. His sodden cloak makes an unsatisfactory pillow but it will have to do for the moment. Half of the wooden seat of the coracle is still hanging loose, having been split in two by the storm. He snaps it off completely and, using it for a makeshift oar, starts to paddle in the direction the eagle flew, his weary muscles protesting at the effort. It is slow going, paddling into a crosswind. The eagle is long since out of sight and he is nearing the point of exhaustion. His hope begins to waver. He fears that he is spending the last of his strength in a futile endeavour. What will become of them once it gives out?  

He thinks back on the conversation he had with his father, that last night before he sailed west. How Amandil had described his own faith as a simple state of being, but recognised Elendil's as a choice. How he had known that the future would provide plenty of reasons for his son to doubt that choice, but trusted him to choose afresh each time. He wants so badly to be worthy of that trust. He has made promises — to his people, to his children, and of course to Miriel — and he will strive to keep them, come what may.

Elendil sets his face towards the north once more. And, as if in answer to his resolution, at last the clouds part. A shaft of sunlight pierces the dark sky and strikes white sails on the horizon. 

Chapter Text

Miriel’s awareness of boarding the ship is hazy. She must be nearly delirious from the exposure and the thirst, and she was already weak. She does not know how Elendil steers their tiny vessel in the right direction but eventually she hears voices in the distance calling out to them, and then she is clinging round his neck as he grasps a rope thrown from aloft.

Eärien gives a stifled cry when she sees them. She embraces her father, and then Miriel herself. Elendil asks after Isildur and Anárion and Eärien reassures him that they are both safe and following on the ships just behind. No one questions it when he and Miriel make their way together on unsteady limbs to the cabin that Eärien has prepared, against all rational hope, for Miriel's arrival. They collapse onto the bunk and Miriel falls at once into a dreamless sleep.

When she awakes, it is with his arms about her, and with her dress now dry but caked to her skin from the salt water.

“Good morning” he rumbles and she feels his beard tickling the back of her neck. 

“What time is it?” she asks.

“Not quite dawn as far as I can tell. I have not yet been aloft. I did not wish to wake you." 

She sits up and becomes aware of her headache and aching limbs. She is thirsty too. Eärien has left a large pitcher of fresh water by the bunk. Elendil hands her a cup and Miriel gulps it down. 

“Has Eärien left a washcloth?” she asks. She is keen to be free of the salt and grime which cake her skin. 

“She has,” says Elendil. “I can send for her, or for an attendant to help you wash.” 

“Will you help me, please.”

Where is the use in shame, now after everything? She thinks perhaps her shame has burned away with the White Tree, or been sunk with the island to the bottom of the sea.

If Elendil is embarrassed, he does not give any sign of it. Together they strip off her dress and he washes her carefully, making sure not to press too hard on any of her cuts and bruises. Once she is clean she lies down again and feels him lie beside her once more. 

“I must seem very changed,” she says. “The time since we were last together has not been kind to me.” 

“You are as beautiful in this moment as I have ever seen you,” he tells her. “I will prove it to you if you will let me.”

She nods. He kisses, oh so lightly, each fading bruise upon her face and neck and then begins to work his way down her chest, taking a detour when he reaches her breast to suck a nipple into his mouth and lave it with his tongue. She hears his breathing start to quicken as though he wishes to ravage her and, to her horror, Miriel feels a sense of panic grip her, as though her heart and lungs are being held in a vice. It is all still so raw. Even though this is Elendil — dear, gentle, tender Elendil — the thought of him inside her has her tensing with fear, rather than quivering with anticipation. 

He pauses in his ministrations. She can feel his beard tickling the underside of her breast as he looks up at her. The image in her mind’s eye would be almost comical if she were not so full of fear and frustration. She wants so badly to give this to him, to give it to herself. But she cannot shake the mounting sense of dread. She feels like her body is betraying her. 

“What is wrong?” he asks her. He can tell. Of course he can. He was always so attuned to what she needed. 

“I may need you to be… patient with me," she chooses her words with care. 

He slides up the bunk to lie beside her and takes her face in his hands. 

“Of course,” he says. “Miriel, I do not wish to presume. You owe me nothing.”

“No,” she says quickly. “I do not want you to stop. I just… need a little time to feel at ease, being with a man again in this way.”

She hears his sharp intake of breath as he comprehends her meaning. “Did he force himself on you?” 

There is no use in denying it. “He did,” she says.

Elendil lets out a sound that is somewhere between a growl and a sob. “Would that I had known. I should have raised an army to free you and cut him down for what he has done to you.” There is a fury in his voice that Miriel has not heard before and it frightens her. She shakes her head, places a hand on his chest and a finger against his lips to silence him.

“Stop, please. I do not want your anger. I have no use for it. He has stolen so much from me already. I would not have him steal this too.” She gestures to the space between them. “Wherever he is now, worse punishments are being devised for him than any you could inflict, Elendil. And right now, I need not your vengeance but your love.”

That seems to quiet his wrath for the moment. “You have it,” he tells her. 

“And your patience, for a time.”

He strokes her hair. “If all I ever do is gaze upon you, it will be enough.”

“I hope you might wish to do a little more than gaze upon me, Captain,” she tells him with the hint of a smile. 

His laugh is a low rumble. “Oh I wish to do very much more than gaze. Please, just tell me what you want.”

She considers for a moment. Then, blushing slightly at the awkwardness of the request, she says “I think, if I knew you were going to remain… outside me… for the time being, I would feel more at ease.”

“Your wish is my command, my Queen.”

“I am nobody’s queen now, Elendil,” she reminds him. 

“Well then, my love,” he says and kisses her deeply. 

He keeps kissing her as he runs his fingertips across her skin. He starts in innocuous places. Her collar bone, her arms, her waist. Her sides are ticklish and they laugh together. He is trying so hard to put her at ease and she loves him for it. Gradually his touches become bolder. One hand cups her breast while the other traces up her inner thigh. He parts her folds with exquisite gentleness and swipes the calloused pad of his thumb against the swollen nub beneath. 

“Oh,” Miriel breathes. “Oh, yes!”

“Not too much?” he asks.

“No, keep going.” 

He continues drawing circles across her skin, while he explores the curve of her ear with his tongue, sending a jolt of electricity straight to her core. 

“More,” she tells him, demanding now. 

He picks up his pace, thumb flying back and forth over her most sensitive flesh. She pulls him down into a bruising kiss, then gasps into his mouth as he finds a particularly good angle. She feels a sense of fierce joy, that her body is capable of experiencing pleasure and not only pain. The pleasure builds and builds until her thighs are trembling with it. Then Elendil ghosts a finger over her entrance and Miriel flies apart at the seams. 

Her climax happens so suddenly that it takes her by surprise. Once she has come down from it she becomes acutely aware that he is still fully clothed, while she lies naked beneath him. 

“Will you let me feel you? All of you?” She asks him.

It may be her imagination but she thinks he sounds almost bashful as he says “if you wish it.” 

She hears the sound of buckles being unfastened and clothing falling to the floor and then he is back and hovering over her once more. She can feel his breath on her face and suddenly her nerves are alight and hunger has replaced the fear in the pit of her stomach. She reaches out and pulls him down on top of her. 

Now she can let herself enjoy it, the heat and the weight and the smell of him. She knows that he will take no more from her than she is willing to give. She finds that she is desperate to touch him everywhere. She runs her hands over the planes of his shoulders, down his back to the curve of his buttocks, opening her legs and canting her hips upwards so that his hard length slips between her thighs and grazes her sex. She hears him gasp and feels drunk on the power of it. She tilts her head to expose her neck and cries out when he plants a hungry kiss on the column of her throat. 

“You are magnificent,” he tells her, awestruck. 

“More,” she pants. “Elendil, please, I need more.” 

“Do you trust me?” He asks her. “There is something we might try.”

Her skin is on fire. “Anything,” she says it like an incantation. “Anything, anything.” 

He sits up and for a moment she feels bereft, but then strong arms are lifting her, turning her to sit in his lap, arranging her carefully so that his length slides between her open legs once more, not breaching her — he made her a promise — but just resting against her entrance, teasing. He lets her settle for a moment, caressing her waist as he does so, then thrusts upwards into the tight space between her thighs, punching a breathy “oh!” out of Miriel. They fall into a rhythm and she rises and falls as best she can to meet his thrusts, chasing the friction. The angle is a little awkward, she is still weak, and they are both more than a little sore, but Miriel thinks it is perfect nonetheless. 

His hands grasp her hips, helping to guide her, and she squeezes her thighs together as tightly as she is able. Her sweat-slicked back slides against his chest. He is hot and hard beneath her and the whole world narrows to the stiff drag of his cock against her sex. Then Elendil shifts slightly, brings one hand up to run a thumb over her nipple. At this angle, the head of his cock hits the bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs with every thrust and Miriel cries out, throwing her head back against his shoulder. 

She feels a desperate coiled pressure building in her belly. She feels like a wild thing, untethered, almost, from her limbs. She feels free. 

She takes one of Elendil’s hands in hers and brings it up to her mouth, sucks on his fingers and tastes herself on them. He moans into her neck. She is panting, desperate, grinding herself against him. She tangles the fingers of one hand in his hair, rakes her fingernails across his scalp and makes him curse, pulls his head down to plant an open-mouthed kiss on the sensitive spot where her shoulder meets her neck. The scrape of his teeth sets her body aflame. With her other hand she reaches down, takes his cock in hand and swipes her thumb across the slit, and with a cry he spills across her stomach. 

Miriel feels him start to soften beneath her and, although she is almost vibrating with need, she moves to climb off his lap, worried that she might hurt him. But Elendil only tightens his arms around her and, still breathless from his climax, whispers into her ear “no, melmenya. Take what you need. Use me. I am yours.”

His words tip Miriel over the edge. She grinds down once more and stars explode behind her eyes.  

****

Later she stands alone in the bow of the ship. She can tell that the sun is coming up. The breeze is fresh. The morning is cool but not unpleasantly so. How different, she thinks, from the wild wind that preceded the great wave. She can hear voices speaking in the tongues of men and of the Eldar. Elendil is giving commands in a clear voice. She hears footsteps approaching her and then an unfamiliar man’s voice. 

“My Lady, that is to say, your Majesty. Are you the queen, Ar-Zimraphel?”

“I am Miriel,” she tells him simply. 

“Forgive me, my Queen,” the man says. He sounds young, and a little nervous. “I only wanted to say that it gladdens my heart to see you, and that my sister will be overjoyed to learn that you are safe.”

“Your sister?” says Miriel, puzzled, and then with sudden understanding, “Oh! Are you Zamîn’s brother!? Is she here?”

“She is in Pelagir. She went ahead with our mother last spring. I did not think it was safe for them in Rómenna any longer.” 

“You were right to send them hence,” Miriel tells him. “I rejoice to hear that she made it safely.” 

“I promised her I would send word as soon as I arrived in Middle Earth,” he says. “I shall be certain to let her know that you and my Lord Elendil made the journey too.”

“What is your name, sailor?” Miriel asks. 

“Balakân,” he answers and then, with a laugh, “or, I suppose perhaps I had better start calling myself Ciryon, now that we are to be friends with the Elves again.”

“Well, friend, whatever you call yourself, you have my deepest gratitude,” she tells him. 

“Thank you, my Lady and, if it is not too bold, you have mine too. Zamîn told me what you did for her. Our family shall never forget it.” 

“I did only that which she had earned, through her own kindness and faithfulness. I wish you and your sister joy, Ciryon,” she tells him earnestly, holding out her hand to him before he departs.

At length Elendil comes to join her. She knows it is him before he speaks. “It ought to take us a few weeks to reach Lindon,” he tells her. “If my messages have not gone astray, the High King Gil-Galad should not be surprised at our arrival. We shall take counsel with him before we think of where to establish the new Kingdom.”

“Your people are fortunate indeed to have a leader with the friendship of the High King,” she tells him.

“Your people,” he corrects her. But Miriel shakes her head. 

“You shall be their King, Elendil.” It is not a question, or even an offer, but simply a statement of fact. Resist as he might, they both know the truth of it. “The people already follow you, and I have spent so much of myself in the service of our Island that I am weary of the weight of it. The task of rebuilding and renewal must belong to another. Besides, I never loved the sceptre for its own sake. I loved only that which I ruled, Numenor herself. I fought to save her with all that I had. Now I have failed, but I can still preserve her memory. I shall be the historian of our people in exile, and sing songs of the beauty of Westernesse ere her fall.”

He does not argue but simply takes her hand in his.

“Though already I find that my memory of the White Tree grows hazy,” Miriel continues sadly.

“The fruit that Isildur took from it has sprouted and put down roots,” he tells her. “We shall plant the sapling in our new home and I shall describe it to you as it grows.”

She lets out a quiet gasp.

“Our home?” 

“If you will share it with me?”

“Yes of course,” she says, tears starting in her eyes. She brings his hand to her lips and kisses it. “I would share everything with you.”

Do not go to Middle Earth, Miriel, her father had told her once. All that awaited her there was darkness. Since then she has lost her sight, her sceptre, even Numenor itself. She has endured long captivity and horrible cruelty. But in this moment, as their ship speeds towards the sunrise, Miriel dares to hope that there might be something for her beyond darkness. 

There will be sorrows ahead in Middle Earth, for grief is ever the price of love. But there will also be joy in abundance. There will be warm summer evenings in the garden that she and Elendil will plant together. There will be long nights wrapped up in each other's arms. There will be poems in the ancient tongue, now they are free to speak it once more. 

And there will be light.