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Peculiar, the damage a dead man can do. Once he is suffocated beneath soil and his own sins, there should be little recourse left to him. Oh, there are the ordinary powers of all that rots; all that is forgotten. The man’s corpse can fester. Maggots and worms can make merry in his flesh, then tunnel new destruction of their own. The man’s bones, if they do not reach burial, can catch in the throat of whatever devoured him.
All this, but: a new awakening. All this, and—
A dead man—can live—
(Softly. Softly now, though the bonds are drawn tight. Let me touch you to show you how angry I am. I want to feel your fear.)
Father and son rest with each other, the splintered metacarpals dangling from the eye sockets, as if Ungoliant, come back to life, has made a new home for herself there. There was not even much of her to save. A pity. So much that is past is a pity…and a pit. Rage, blackness, the sticky tar of the disappointed heart.
(One.)
What else is there to think of? The air breathes a little dustier; every window is ventless, now, for the wind blows high and cold. Nobody will come to find them here. Yet, the world marches on. Yet, the news is uniformly troubling. The disgrace of such failed parallelism is very great. Disgrace it must be, when one blasts and builds a veritable empire, and one is—forgotten.
(Two, and he—fidgets. You crawled to me, wishing to make things right. You promised you could do with one just as well as you did with two. You vowed a victory at my knees and I said yea, as would a God to a servant. What have you brought back, pray? What have they brought back?)
Of course, the man is dead. His bones are here already, and his father’s.
The man is dead, or as good as. His ruined body is his grave. Take comfort in that if in nothing else.
(Three, and did you know, I struck him once just the same. The point just under his—eye—)
A courier arrives, which is a rare occurrence on the Mountain, these days. How, particularly, he made his solitary, winding journey up the steep flanks of rock and bristling forest, Melkor Bauglir does not know. Whether it was his worn-heart loyalty that drove his feet onward, or whether it was simple fear, Melkor Bauglir does not care. The messenger is clad in regimental grey, and his coat and trousers are damp with rain and sweat.
The grey is a good sign, in and of itself.
Bauglir takes the plump, battered letter from the man’s weary hands and leaves him without another word. He returns with the letter to his study, where Mairon is strung up beside the door, silent and watchful, pin-cushioned by half a dozen darts in his face and breast.
“News,” Bauglir says, cheerfully. Brought by a soldier means Manwe. The thickness of the parcel suggests some aid. He moves to make for his desk, then reconsiders. He crosses the floor and plucks the dart from below Mairon’s remaining eye.
It will make a good letter-opener.
Mairon, who directed the failed attack on Mithrim, does not ask him what the news is. This is no insult, for Mairon has always been carefully silent when it is his turn on the rack. But thinking of Mairon and Mithrim and bodies exposed, Bauglir’s ears throb with the remembered voice, the boyish insults. Does one miss what one hated?
Does one miss the dead man one killed?
(Take comfort)
“We are made,” he announces triumphantly, folding and unfolding the letter at its seams. “Five hundred men, and more to follow, marching west. Five hundred of my men.” That is the truth and the future, split in two: the men march west, but they do not wholly understand how absolute was his claim to them. He sets the letter down. He presses his fingers to his lips.
“It was a wise thought,” he says aloud, “To test Mithrim with forgettable men. That way our slate is clean for more official encroachments. It was my wise thought, however. I cannot credit you for it, Mairon. I wish I could. The fault—and thus the punishment—falls to you because of how ill they were trained, how ill they were prepared. Did you not spend time in Mithrim yourself? Do you not know it intimately?”
Silence.
“Speak to me, Mairon. How was it that they could break on its gates like a pailful of water tossed over a stone?”
“I failed you.”
“You are still too angry and too frightened. It was always so. But you are full a man now, and strategy should not be flawed by what we hate or fear.” He crosses the room, coming very close, and strokes the spots of blood away. “Cut yourself down,” he mouths. “I know you can.”
Peculiar, the hope a fool can give. Manwe sits in the east, biting his nails and desiring a better future, even though he shall not live forever, and shall not see his brother again. Manwe agrees that dead Feanor is a menace because of what goes on after him, and sends troops. The only wrinkle is that Manwe believes himself a man bound by formal custom. The troops, therefore, shall arrive at San Francisco, shall be dispatched and stationed according to proper signatures and chains of authority.
This is inconvenient, like the rough skin of a Californian fruit. But peel the skin away: it hides a tender thing. Peel the skin away, and drink of the rich, sweet juices of promise.
San Francisco is a land of power. He has been there before, and now he can return with purpose. If the petty landlords of the west will not doff their crowns to a god of mountain stronghold, the god shall walk among them, and do business like a common man.
Let them, rather than him, fear the ordinary power of all that rots.