Chapter Text
… Thereafter the fire and smoke went up without ceasing; for the power of Sauron daily increased, and in that temple, with spilling of blood and torment and great wickedness, men made sacrifice to Melkor that he should release them from Death.
The Silmarillion, "Akallabêth: The Downfall of Númenor"
Umbar, the Temple of Mulkhêr, the year 178 of the Third Age.
The great doors boom closed behind him. The dull thud echoes around the cavernous space with eerie reverberations. His heart pounds against his ribcage like a mad mûmak set loose.
Zôrzagar son of Bawbuthôr, formerly an Imperial Prince of the House of Pellardur, has never known fear such as this. Cold sweat wets his back beneath his courtly robes of gem-strewn brocade. The rich mantle is his last princely possession, hoarded through bitter days for the mere chance of this audience.
Now at last, Zôrzagar stands alone in the divine presence. He will get but one chance to plead his case. He must not fail.
Still it is a hard thing, to set one foot before the other and advance across the vast expanse of ash-strewn flagstones along the central nave, towards the altar.
Lord Mulkhêr’s Eye is upon His servants wherever they turn. Even in Pellardur’s smaller temple His presence can be felt, but here in the Great Temple of Umbar, the Ancient Darkness is almost tangible. It bleeds from the gloom in the hall’s shadowy corners, pressing close upon the mind, inescapable. A writhing seen only from the corner of one’s eye, a whisper just beyond hearing, a ravenous, devouring will, ever hungry, ever seeking.
The entire cold and wrathful weight of Lord Mulkhêr’s divine presence bears down upon Zôrzagar. A mere man is naught beneath it. An insect permitted to crawl across the temple floor, fit only to be crushed.
"Darkness alone is worshipful,” as he walks, Zôrzagar murmurs again and again the ancient prayer to ward against the fear whispering at the edges of his mind, “and Mulkhêr is the Lord thereof, and through His servant the Zigûr the Lord may yet make other worlds to be gifts to those that serve Him, so that the increase of their power shall find no end."
Onwards he struggles, between gilded pillars that emerge like twisted dream-shapes from the shadows on either side. In the half-light above him hulks the gold-plated mass of the imperial gallery. It stands empty, but its red brocade drapes wave slowly, like hanging corpses, in some stream of air.
Zôrzagar’s eyes flick up to the imperial throne and the nobles’ seats set around it. Each high-backed chair is emblazoned with the crest of a House of Kingsmen. The Peers of the Realm of Umbar, all the ancient Adûnaîm nobility arranged according to rank.
A cold rage flames in the pit of his stomach. His late father’s chair has been left in its place at the Emperor’s right hand, but there is no trace of the family crest. Where once gleamed gilding and the proud crimson viper set with blood-red rubies, brutal axe-blows have left only bare and splintered wood.
The ruined chair disfigures the richness of the gallery like a brand in a pretty girl’s face. The House of Pellardur has been made an example, a shameful warning to the other nobles.
Behold what befalls those who displease the Holy One.
Zôrzagar tears his eyes away from the gallery. He must prepare for the ordeal to come. If he fails today, no son of his will ever again ascend to those heights.
Forward he walks beneath the temple’s great dome, following the dusty trails of bare feet: slaves, stripped and huddling together as they were driven forward, to where the altar looms.
The temple’s main altar is dedicated to Mulkhêr, the Lord of All. The black stone cube towers eight feet above the hall’s floor, so all present might witness the Sacred Agonies. The stone’s nature and origin is unknown - no quarry in all Umbar produces anything like it. A true black so deep that it seems to suck in the light, dark as the starless Void.
The sides have been sculpted - it is said - by the Zigûr’s own hand, in Anadûnê in the days before the Drowning. A holy frieze wraps itself around the base, depicting strange shapes neither Man nor spider that writhe about as if in torment. No matter how great a fire the Priests of the Altar build upon it, the stone is always ice-cold to the touch.
Mulkhêr the Giver of Freedom demands respect even from the noblest of His followers, and this altar is the holiest in all Arda.
Zôrzagar bends down, sinks to his knees, and knocks his forehead against the black flagstones underfoot once, twice, thrice, before laying himself flat against the stone for the full prostration. He is no cowering slave but a nobleman of Umbar, and so he pushes himself up and dares to stand as he looks up at the hallows.
The fires of today’s sacrifice have died down, and only the slightest coils of oily smoke still stretch like begging fingers towards the vast dome of tarnished silver overhead. Now the red light of sunset streams down the great louver where the cries of dying sacrifices and the smoke of their flesh have risen up to sustain Mulkhêr in His banishment.
Even now the altar’s chains retain some scorched remnants, colourless tatters of skin clinging to the iron like rags. Four skulls remain amongst the ashes, along with the thick bones of arms and legs, scattered as the bodies contorted over the flames. Soon the temple slaves will scrub the stone clean, crushing the burned bones as they gather up the ashes. For now, that greasy, tell-tale temple-stench of singed hair and incense remains thick in the air.
As he stands watching, cold dread creeps up on him. At the edge of his vision something moves. He turns around, but nothing stirs in the vast expanse of the hall behind him. He startles when the shadows shift around a door hidden behind the golden side altar to the Zigûr.
The Holy One has come.
A will like an iron hook pierces his mind, and at once his knees buckle as his body folds down into another prostration. The flagstones are covered in a fine layer of greasy ash, and with his face pressed to the floor he is forced to breathe in its burned-meat stink.
Only then does the highest of Mulkhêr’s many servants approach. Zôrzagar shakes with terror as one footstep after another thuds across the floor towards him.
Before this moment he had wished to set eyes on the Holy One, foremost among the Nine Exalted Ones whom Mulkhêr has delivered from death. When at last the footsteps halt about twenty paces before him, he is glad that all he can see are dusted flagstones and the edge of a dark robe. No Man could look upon that face and live.
“Zôrzagar, son of Bâwbuthôr.” The Holy One’s voice hacks at the mind like a dull blade. “You have been summoned before me to answer for your father’s failure.”
The Holy One pauses where another man would have breathed, but Zôrzagar can hear no breath being drawn.
“Lord Mulkhêr has been generous. The House of Pellardur possessed all that Men might desire: gold and gems in hoard; warriors, slaves, and women whom you command as you will. A fleet of Corsair ships to rule the seas.”
“And in exchange-” the Holy One towers over Zôrzagar’s prone form. “ In exchange for all this, your father was to capture but a single White-fiend ship.”
Zôrzagar knows not what that White-fiend ship might have been carrying, but its escape has so enraged the Holy One, that Bawbuthôr’s House has been stripped of all fiefs and titles. The proud Prince of Pellardur has been made a pauper.
The Holy One’s voice cuts the ear like acid and venom. “Answer me, princeling. Has your father brought me that ship?”
“No, Lord.” Zôrzagar stammers, shaking so uncontrollably that his outstretched hands draw clean black stripes in the fine ash-layer covering the flagstones.
“This ship carried White-fiend traitors whom the Eye greatly desired as prisoners.” Another pause, the silence deep as a tomb. Then, a whip-sharp snarl, “has your father brought me my prisoners!?”
“No, Lord,” howls Zôrzagar, and smacks his forehead against the floor until it bruises like a slave’s, the deepest possible self-abasement.
The Holy One takes no notice.
“No indeed! You witless worm, daring to plead to me for clemency!” that terrible voice booms against the great dome overhead and echoes in all directions, a torment multiplied. “Do you not grasp what damage your fool of a father has wrought to the Holy Cause!? These precious hostages! What Elvish conspiracies they would reveal under questioning! The Eye will not be pleased.” Is that a trace of fear in the Holy One’s voice?
“Lord, have mercy,” Zôrzagar pleads, all princely dignity abandoned. “My House is wholly devoted to the Holy Cause.”
“Poor devotion, indeed.” That cold voice is torment as it mocks him. “Do you not think it a shameful tale? A princely flagship was your father’s Shakalzôr, and still he was sunk like a fisher-boy at his first raid.”
Again that dreadful laugh, cold as the Void itself. “What honour have you left, o son of Bâwbuthôr? What claim to my mercy?”
Zôrzagar feels the blood leave his face. He presses his forehead to the cold stone and prays to Mulkhêr for the ground to open up and let Darkness swallow him.
“Forgiveness, oh Holy One!” he utters past the panic clawing at his throat. This is the moment he has been waiting for, his one chance. “I am not my father. I beg humbly for a chance to serve you! Take my life if you must, but restore the Princedom to my heir!”
If his own life is forfeit, so be it. As Bawbuthôr’s eldest son and heir, he must answer for his father’s failures. All that might be rescued is the family title.
The Holy One’s laugh is a dreadful, bone-dry sound that flays the mind to shreds.
“Look up, Zôrzagar. Look at the altar.”
The stone tables stand empty, massive oblongs of granite with their iron shackles dangling. Below, half-drowned in darkness, lay the trench that rings each one round like a moat, smoking still with the last ritual’s final embers.
“What use have I for fools like you?” demands that horrible voice. “None but this: that your Agony might nourish the Elder King. When the priests begin to cut, a noble Umbarian will bleed and scream as well as any slave, and your flesh shall make fine smoke.”
At his feet, Zôrzagar writhes as if the holy knives were already upon him. “Lord, I beg you!” he babbles.
The Holy One waits for a dreadful heartbeat. “I shall wield the knife myself. Piece by bleeding piece I will burn your useless flesh for Lord Mulkhêr to feed on. And keep you alive to watch until the very end.”
Oh Mulkhêr, deliver me from Death! In his terror, Zôrzagar is vaguely aware of something warm and wet spreading between his legs.
The Holy One laughs once more, and Zôrzagar’s mind becomes a black haze of terror. Had he dared he would have screamed, only to end that dreadful, torturous laugh.
For a time, the Holy One remains silent, savouring Zôrzagar’s fear like a fine wine. Zôrzagar lies trembling, barely noting the cold where his wet robes cling to his legs, the stench of his own piss thick in the air.
“Approach me, Zôrzagar!”
No mere Man can refuse such a command. Zôrzagar knows better than to stand up. Instead he pushes himself to his hands and knees, head hanging low and eyes on the floor and crawls across the hall, his palms rubbed bloody against the stone. The greasy ash of burned bodies clings to the sores.
He has a long way to crawl, and all that time the Holy One does not move but watches him in silence. He has almost reached the Holy One’s feet when that dreadful voice speaks once more.
“Remove your clothes.”
Ai Mulkhêr! He truly means to sacrifice me!
Zôrzagar is used to being dressed by a house-slave, and his hands shake so badly he cannot undo the jewelled clasps on his brocade overrobe. He fumbles for a small eternity. At last, terrified of enraging the Holy One yet further with his dawdling, he tears them off one by one. The precious fabric rips with a sharp sound that echoes through the temple.
Once he has stripped off his soiled undergarments he kneels naked like a slave before the sacrifice, his flesh bared to the Holy One’s gaze. And His knife.
“Yes. You are young and strong. A useful tool indeed.”
Hope springs up in Zôrzagar’s breast. A tool, the Holy One called him. Does this mean he has some purpose beyond suffering on the altar?
“Yes Lord, yes,” he babbles. “Behold your tool, your servant. Command me as you desire.”
The Holy One walks a full circle around Zôrzagar’s kneeling shape, black boots thudding against the flagstones. Surely this silence means approval?
Zôrzagar is of purest Adûnâi blood, untainted by the lesser slave-races of Middle-earth. He is blessed with all the strength and fairness of his race and well experienced in the arts of war. He has led expeditions for the glory of Mulkhêr's true faith against the Haradrim heretics, carrying home slaves and plunder. He can fulfill any feat of strength or skill the Holy One might require of him.
“Climb up on the altar, then kneel.” The Holy One crushes Zôrzagar’s tender hopes.
“Oh Holy One-”
“Silence. Obedience alone might grant your plea.”
Hot tears burn in Zôrzagar’s eyes. His life is forfeit. All he might hope for now is that by making a worthy sacrifice, he might regain his House’s title for his son to inherit.
He is glad for one small mercy - they are alone. Sacrifices are public spectacles. The Lesser Men are rounded up to watch them regularly, lest they forget the respect owed to Lord Mulkhêr and their Adûnaîm overlords. Only a man of Zôrzagar’s rank may die unwatched.
The Holy One follows behind in a rustle of robes as Zôrzagar forces his numb feet up the twelve shallow black steps to the altar's flat top.
Once on the altar, Zôrzagar wades through the still-warm ash and bones of yesterday’s sacrifice. His foot hits a half-buried skull, which cracks into scorched fragments at the touch. For the first time in a lifetime of attending Sacred Agonies, he wonders who it was that bled and burned here.
Beneath the layer of ash, the black altar stone underfoot is ice-cold. Each step drinks warmth from his feet so they feel dead as wood after but a few steps.
He stands before one of those stone tables on which he has seen so many writhing bodies chained and cut apart, wondering if he should lie down of his own accord and offer up his wrists for the chains.
A shove points him the other way. “Kneel there.”
What does the Holy One mean by this strange breach of the ritual? Zôrzagar obeys, though his knees go numb as he kneels away from the ash, near the low table that holds the sacred chalices.
The golden vessels gleam in the half-light. Each is engraved with the holy name of Mulkhêr in swirling veins of calligraphy, set with blood-red rubies to match the libations within. The day’s spilt blood has congealed into crimson clots as Lord Mulkhêr sated Himself upon its life-giving essence.
One empty chalice stands to the side, covered by a black silk cloth. Zôrzagar will be the one to fill it.
The Holy One moves to stand before him, a faceless terror robed in black silk. Zôrzagar breathes deeply, inhaling the hot altar-scents of ash and burned grease. These are his final living moments. Soon the Sacred Agony will begin and he will die upon the Holy One’s blade, cut by slow, torturous cut, his screams of agony nourishment for Mulkhêr’s devouring presence.
Zôrzagar battles to master his tremors. He is a noble of the House of Ar-Pharazôn. He will die with dignity. By Mulkhêr’s grace he has lived a life of honour. The blood-soaked sand of his victories in Harad. The princely household he ruled as lord and master. An heir, two spares, and a passel of daughters sired on his pure-blooded wives. Thirty-seven slave-born bastards when last he had them counted.
A worthy life, but oh, so short! A mere sixty years, when a Lord of the race of Anadûnê might live thrice that span.
The Holy One moves, but He draws no knife. A black-gloved hand closes about the stem of a full chalice and lifts the holy vessel like a drinking cup - an act of sacrilege from any other man.
Zôrzagar stares, numb with shock, as The Holy One dips His hand into the chalice. A leather-gloved hand paints the symbol of the Lidless Eye on Zôrzagar’s chest. He startles at the touch, slick and icy against his skin.
Another mad flare of hope - no sacrifice to Mulkhêr is ever adorned with the sign of His prophet, the Zigûr. Zôrzagar keeps himself as still as he might, his eyes on the cold black stone as that holy hand marks him with blood.
“Serve me you shall,” the Holy One’s voice darkens the silence. “The ship your father failed to catch carried one especially vile White-fiend named Glorfindel, and his accomplice, a foul halfbreed called Elrohir. These heretics have sinned greatly against our Lord Mulkhêr. I shall be His instrument to wreak divine vengeance upon them. You may assist me in this.”
“Yes, yes, oh Holy one!” Zôrzagar reels with the sudden return of hope. He dares not look up lest the Holy One change his mind.
“I called you a tool,” says the Holy One, once the Eye glares red and angry from Zôrzagar’s chest. “Perhaps ‘vessel’ is more apt. A meek and pliant vessel.”
The Holy One waits to see the effect of His words.
Zôrzagar dares not speak and so he bows forward until his forehead touches the icy black stone.
“Raise your head,” says the Holy One, and at once Zôrzagar obeys.
The Holy One’s black robes are hooded, and beneath Zôrzagar sees naught but shadow while that black-gloved hand paints another Eye across his face. The stench of old blood clogs his nose. A firm stroke crosses his lips, and his mouth fills with foul copper.
“Yes.” There is approval in the Holy One’s voice when at last Zôrzagar is wholly marked. “You shall open to me, Zôrzagar. You shall open yourself, and I shall take possession of you, wholly and completely. You will surrender to me in all ways. Obey, and I will return what your fool of a father threw away.”
“I serve you,” Zôrzagar croaks, dizzy with relief.
“Down on your face! Abase yourself before Mulkhêr, the King of the World,” orders the Holy One.
Zôrzagar folds forward to lie prone amidst the ashes, his naked skin pressed against the black altar all along his front. The stone’s icy cold hungrily drinks all warmth from his body.
The Holy One does not touch him. He only stands still, watching.
At first Zôrzagar shivers, but soon his body goes numb with the stone’s sapping cold, his limbs so chilled they seem to belong to another.
When at last the red sunbeam from the great louver has darkened to dusk, Zôrzagar could not have risen if he had been ordered to.
Only then, wreathed in the shadows of the day’s dying, does the Holy One Sing.
That terrible voice echoes against the temple’s silver dome, deep as the Ancient Darkness, and at its call the very shadows come alive. They writhe and whisper, closing in until the black altar is but an island in the shivering Dark.
The Holy One Sings on, all might and domination. A Song of opening, possession, conquest. That dreadful Song pours into Zôrzagar’s ears, pulling him into its depths like the dark water that drowned Anadûnê.
He struggles, desperate to escape, but at once the Song changes. Like a battering ram it bludgeons against his mind.
Again and again it bellows a single word, an order.
Open. Open yourself to me.
In his panic Zôrzagar vainly tries to rise, to flee, because what now batters at the doors of his mind is unbearable. His wooden limbs barely twitch. The icy altar holds him down, and his body will not obey him. Tears stream down his blood-smeared face as he battles to raise his head and look upon his tormentor so he might beg for mercy.
“Please-” but as the word leaves his lips, he knows it is vain. There is no mercy here.
Beneath Holy One’s black hood His withered face snarls, lit as if by corpse-glow, its expression mad and twisted with ravenous hunger. The eyes are sightless pits of scarring.
Open! the Holy One’s command rings inside Zôrzagar‘s skull. Open, and let me enter.
Zôrzagar‘s head drops down to the stone once more, heedless of the ash that clogs his nose and mouth with every heaving breath.
That voice! That dreadful voice! In his terror Zôrzagar barely registers his own keening howls.That voice is inside his head and he cannot, cannot bear it.
He thrashes and rages against the sheer horror of it. With a jerk he rolls up onto his knees, right beside the altar’s edge. An eight foot drop onto the temple floor below might dislodge that dreadful grip.
He turns and twists. He kicks vainly into the piled ashes, sending a spray of burned bones clattering to the flagstones below. For a moment he thinks himself free, but then the Holy One clamps his spirit in jaws of steel, and his body sinks down onto the cold altar stone once more.
Zôrzagar’s howls die in his throat. A blade has appeared in the Holy One’s hand. A long, thin knife that glows with a pale light of its own.
I offer you a generous bargain, but I have no use for a damaged vessel. Submit or you die, and your princedom with you.
Zôrzagar moans with misery. He has a choice indeed. He either obeys or he dies here, body and spirit pierced by that Morgul-blade. The ancient and venerable Princedom of Pellardur, a line of true Kingsmen unbroken since Anadûne, will end with him; his heir reduced to beggary.
Submit!
He is sobbing, tears stream down his face as finally, at the end of his strength, he turns his face to the stone and lets go. With a long shudder the last of Zôrzagar’s defenses crumble, and like a city breached by its besieger, he opens.
Yes! exclaims that terrible voice, streaming into his mind like acid and poison. Give me your body. My vessel.
The Holy One tears through him like wolf’s teeth tear the tender lamb. He is taken, possessed, filled with an alien will that pushes him back until he is but a kernel of consciousness in the furthest recesses of his head.
It is the Holy One who opens Zôrzagar’s eyes, and moves them this way and that to look at the ash-strewn stone beneath his face.
Zôrzagar is nothing, a cobweb-thin thing pressed against the edges of his own skull. Powerless, weak, wholly conquered.
Zôrzagar’s body rises. Cool air streams through his windpipe, but it is not he who breathes. The sound of his own laughter rings in his ears, but he does not laugh.
The Holy One is no longer standing before him. All that is left is an empty black robe and gloves, crumpled at his feet.
“I have eyes!” From Zôrzagar‘s throat tears a wild, inhuman cry of triumph that echoes through the temple’s cavernous darkness.
Zôrzagar’s hands rise, slowly opening and closing as the Holy One watches the muscles contract and release.
Deep inside, what is left of Zôrzagar cowers before the Holy One’s terrifying joy.
Thoughts now lie open between them both, two minds in one flesh. The Holy One has led a long life. Mulkhêr truly did release Him from death. As Zôrzagar marvels at a thousand years of life unending, the Holy One bends forward and retrieves from one of the gloves a golden ring, set with a single ruby.
Despite the darkness the red stone glistens with an alien light of its own. With great care, the Holy One puts it on Zôrzagar’s right forefinger. At once the Holy One’s grip on Zôrzagar’s body tightens a thousandfold. He could not now dislodge it even if he wished to. He is bound by that ring. Bound in the Darkness.
The Holy One holds up his hand, the stone gleaming like an angry eye in the dark.
See what blessings Mulkhêr, the Giver of Life can grant. Serve Him well! Give me your body in which to be a man and walk unseen among other Men, all the way to Imladris in the North. There we will seek out the White-fiend called Glorfindel, chief among Lord Mulkhêr’s enemies. It was he who took my eyes.
Zorzagar can never unsee those scarred pits in the Holy One’s face, His eyes burned away by a light brighter than flesh can bear.
There is honour in this for you, Zôrzagar. If that voice could coax, this might be it. Glorfindel is your father’s killer.
Yes, oh Holy One!
Zôrzagar’s father, the noble Prince Bawbuthôr, lies drowned beneath the waves. Unburied, with neither tomb nor sacrifice, dead by this White-fiend’s hand. Avenging his father’s murder would salvage what remains of Zôrzagar’s honour after his … possession.
The Holy One approves.
Yes, Zôrzagar, my willing vessel. Together we will find Glorfindel, and destroy him. When this is done I shall reward you.
Zôrzagar sees this Glorfindel in the Holy One’s memory, a gleaming nightmare of starlight and steel, and he shudders.
How will you kill a deathless White-fiend from Amatthâni? He dares to ask, fearing what might befall his body at the hands of such a foe.
The Holy One shakes Zôrzagar’s head.
Glorfindel has died before, and he has returned. Death is nothing to the Eldar. To us who dwell between Seen and Unseen. And in both worlds he is powerful.
Not by my hand will Glorfindel fall. Not by sword or steel. Nor sacred knife. No, Zôrzagar.
We must come at such a one by unsuspecting ways. Glorfindel is mighty indeed, but that half-breed whelp Elrohir is no match for me.
Zôrzagar’s face contracts into a smile not his own.
To break a man, destroy what he loves.
It is he whose name is not now spoken; for the Valar have deceived you concerning him, putting forward the name of Eru, a phantom devised in the folly of their hearts, seeking to enchain Men in servitude to themselves. For they are the oracle of this Eru, which speaks only what they will. But he that is their master shall yet prevail, and he will deliver you from this phantom; and his name is Melkor, Lord of All, Giver of Freedom, and he shall make you stronger than they.
Sauron to Ar-Pharazôn in The Silmarillion, "Akallabêth: The Downfall of Númenor"