Chapter Text
Far to the south, another member of the Nine rode beneath an empty sky. The immaculate desert stretched out before him, farther than the eye could see. Khamûl had been given no warning. No explanation. Only an order. He was to travel west.
There was a thing Sauron required. A thing that had passed into the hands of Men. A thing that must not reach the lands beyond the mountains.
Khamûl had asked no questions. The Nine did not ask questions. They obeyed. That was their nature.
Yet, Khamûl had always possessed more patience than the others. And that patience had made him valuable. Dangerously valuable, at least to Sauron.
He was called the Shadow of the East. He had once been a king. He remembered that much.
Not his kingdom. Not his wife. Or his children, if he had any.
At times, if he tried very hard, he could hear the whisper of gossamer red curtains brushing against pillars. See sunlight filtering through the fabric. Smell the pungent aroma of incense and spice.
It all came in bits and pieces. But there was nothing more.
More than that, and the fact of kingship.
Sometimes, when he looked upon the ruins of Men, something stirred within him - pity, contempt, longing. He never knew which.
He had crossed lands where the tongues of Men were strange to him. He had passed through deserts where the sun burned white overhead. He had watched caravans crawl like a line of ants beneath distant stars. He had seen temples whose gods had long since been forgotten.
And everywhere he went, Men died. Everywhere he went, Men lived. Everywhere he went, Men remained Men. Brief. Fragile. Terribly free.
He despised them for it.
Such were the thoughts that crossed his weary mind as he urged his horse onward, crossing league after league of scorching sand.
The trap was beautiful.
That was what Khamûl remembered.
Not the pain.
Not the blood.
The beauty.
A grove stood in the midst of the southern wilderness, green and impossible beneath the burning sky. There was a pool of water there.
Khamûl could hear it.
He had been travelling for days. The horse beneath him was exhausted. He dismounted.
The trees were silent. Too silent. He should have known. But there was something in the air - something old.
Khamûl stepped beneath the branches. He led his horse to the pool, too weak to resist the innate aversion he felt towards the water. He was done. He sank beside the horse, tilting his head upward.
And in an instant, the world changed.
The heat vanished. The rustling wind disappeared.
And suddenly he was sitting on a mossy floor, in a forest that did not belong to the South.
He bolted upright and drew his sword. Silver leaves moved overhead. White light fell upon the ground.
Elves.
The conclusion had scarcely entered his mind when three figures appeared between the trees. Then five. Then more.
He could not see their faces clearly. Their voices were soft. Almost gentle, like a lullaby.
“You have no right to be here.”
Khamûl sighed in exhaustion.
“I have the right that power gives, the power of the Dark Lord.”
One of the Elves raised his hand. “Such power means nothing here.”
The world shuddered. Khamûl staggered. And for the first time in centuries, he felt something he had almost forgotten.
Pain.
Real pain.
Not the cold emptiness of the Ring. Not the agony of the will-bending.
Pain.
He looked down. Something bright had entered his chest.
There was no blade. No arrow.
Only light.
He tried to tear it away, but his hand only passed through it.
The pain increased.
Khamûl screamed; for a second he felt a strange terror at it, and heard the dark, shrill reality of his voice.
What is happening?! Was that me?
The Elves did not move. Their speech echoed calmly. “You are bound.”
He fell to one knee. “Please,” he whispered, voice ragged.
“Bound to the earth,” said another.
“Please, have mercy. What do you know of it, after all?”
A chestnut-haired Elf looked at him with something that might have been pity.
“More than you.”
The light spread.
Khamûl felt himself being dragged downward.
Not into the earth.
Into himself.
For one terrible moment, he felt his body. A living body.
Warm. Breathing. Young.
He felt sunlight warm his skin.
The memory - or reality - he couldn’t tell which, was so sudden that it nearly destroyed him.
Then the Ring burned, passing energy from sinew to sinew. The vision vanished. Khamûl rose unhappily, not knowing how. He struck. The sword passed through the Elf's form.
The Elf recoiled - Khamûl struck again.
The grove erupted in white fire.
He fled, not knowing where. He only knew that he had to escape. Behind him, voices called. Ahead, the world twisted.
He ran.
And ran.
And ran.
When he finally emerged from the grove, the sun was setting.
Khamûl fell beside his horse.
The poor beast was dead, collapsed beside the silver pool.
He stared at it, for a long time unable to understand what had happened. There was sun, and the scorching heat, oh how he hated it, and then the forest emerged from nowhere.
Then he saw the wound.
A blackness spread beneath his robes. Not blood.
Something stranger. Something that did not belong to flesh.
The pain remained.
That was what terrified him. The Ring had preserved him, from whatever sorcery the Elves possessed. But it had not made him invulnerable.
Whatever spell they used, whatever work the Elvish blade had done, had reached beyond the protection of the Ring itself.
Khamûl stood. The world swayed. He began walking north.
He travelled through the night; the stars moved unceasingly overhead.
As he walked, he thought of the Witch-king. The Captain.
The only one among them whom Khamûl had a relationship that went beyond mutual trust and teamwork. There was hatred there, rivalry, disrespect, distrust, and perhaps, a little fear mixed in the picture as well. But at the least, he kept things interesting.
Khamûl wondered where he was.
He wondered if he had gained victory.
Then Khamûl remembered. No. The message had arrived to him in the desert, some days before the ambush. The Witch-king had been defeated. His heart sank within him. Surely, Sauron would know of this failure as well.
The Elves, however they had managed to warp his travels, had surely thrown him off course at least a couple hundred leagues.
All of them would know soon.
Yet, the thought brought a strange satisfaction.
The Captain could fail.
Even the greatest of them could fail.
Perhaps that meant—
Khamûl stopped. He hated the thought before it had even finished. Perhaps we are not eternal.
He looked toward the mountains, their peaks rising black against the moon, with a little trepidation.
Surely Sauron had not heard…? Somewhere beyond those peaks lay Mordor.
Khamûl continued.