The Last Ringbearer (10 page)

Praise the One that this did not become necessary – by the end of the second day the Elvish antiseptics had worked, Tangorn’s fever went down and the wound started to close quickly. The adventure was far from over, though. It turned out that, unbeknownst to their officers, the mercenaries had put up a huge vat making
araka
– a local brew made from
manna
– in one of the adjoining ruined rooms and gathered there for a drink or three every nightfall. The companions mostly got used to the soldiers (just sit quiet as a mouse in their well-isolated room during the party), but Haladdin vividly pictured some overzealous duty officer taking the pains to examine every room around in order to discover the source of the ‘water of life’: “Hey, you three! Ten-shut, lushes! What’s your platoon? Where’re your uniforms, Orc-bait?” Just imagine blowing it all like that …

Still, while hiding in the ruins was dangerous, venturing forth would have been total madness: mounted and foot patrols of Easterlings and Elves kept combing the desert, examining even fresh fox tracks. Meanwhile a new problem arose: a severe water shortage. They had to use too much water on the wounded man, and there was no way to replenish the stock, since there was foot traffic around the outpost well day and night. After five days the situation became critical – they had half a pint between them. The baron recalled his Teshgol adventure and gloomily mentioned frying pan and fire. What rotten luck, Haladdin thought: this is the first time in our three weeks in the desert that we’re actually thirsty, and that less than a hundred yards from a well!

Salvation came from an unexpected quarter – on the sixth day the first sandstorm of the season struck. A yellow wall approached from the south, gradually extending upwards – it seemed that the desert horizon was rolling up like the ragged edge of a monstrous scroll; the sky turned ashen, and one could look at the bleached-white noon sun without squinting, as if it were the moon. Then the boundary between earth and sky disappeared altogether, as if two enormous hot frying pans came together, raising myriads of grains of sand into the air between them; their mad dance lasted for more than three days. Tzerlag knew better than the others what a
simoom
was like, and offered a sincere prayer to the One for all those caught away from shelter – not even an enemy deserves such a fate. The One must have ignored the part about enemies; later they gathered from soldiers’ talk that several patrols (about twenty men in total) did not make it back to the base in time and were certainly dead. There was no reason to search for Eloar any longer, as not even his corpse could be found now. And in the evening Tzerlag wrapped himself in the Elvish hooded cloak and finally made it to the courtyard well under the cover of the suffocating yellow fog. So when Tangorn raised a still-wet flask a few minutes later and offered a toast to the desert demons, the scout frowned doubtfully but did not object.

They left their hideout on the last night of the sandstorm, when the wind had mostly failed and did no more than drag wisps of sand along the ground, obliterating all tracks. The scout led his comrades west, to Morgai, hoping to meet nomadic Orocuens who would be bringing their cattle there to the spring pastures, and rest a little with one of his numerous relatives. They detoured to Eloar’s camp along the way and dug up the trophies that Tzerlag had been so far-sighted to hide back then. The scout used the opportunity to check on the Elf’s corpse and found it nearly fully mummified; isn’t it strange that neither carrion-eaters nor worms ever touch the Elvish dead – are they poisonous or something? …

They started their quick march towards the mountains with the first light: to move during the day was to take a huge risk, but they had to use the short time they had when they did not have to worry about concealing their tracks. By the end of the second day the company got to the plateau, but Tzerlag had seen no nomads, and it was beginning to seriously worry him.

The dale where they camped was green because a little but talkative spring lived there. It must have been lonely and now hurried to tell its unexpected guests all the news of its tiny world: spring is late this year, so the blue irises at the third bend are not in flower yet, but yesterday it had a visit from some gazelles it knew, an old male with a couple of females … one could listen to this quiet melodious murmur forever. Only a man who has spent weeks in the desert drinking nothing but bitter salty water at the bottom of cattle watering holes and meager drops of tasteless
tzandoi
distillate can appreciate what it means to immerse one’s face into living, running water. It can only be compared to the first touch of a lover after a very long separation; no wonder that the imagination of desert dwellers has not some pompous Crystal Palace of Delights at the center of its Paradise, but rather a small lake under a waterfall …

Then they drank tea brewed to oily blackness, ceremoniously passing around their only nicked tea bowl somehow preserved by the sergeant through all the troubles (“Real Khandian work, I’ll have you know!”), and now Tzerlag was unhurriedly explaining to Tangorn that green tea has a multitude of virtues, whereas the question of whether it’s better than black tea is akin to the ridiculous one of whether one loves mother or father best – each has its time and place. For example, in the heat of midday … Haladdin was only half-listening to the discourse, just like he was listening to the murmuring of the brook behind large stones, experiencing marvelous moments of quiet happiness, kind of like … family happiness, perhaps?

The fire, quickly burning down dry salsola roots (their gray trunks covered most of the nearby slope), cast a bright light on his comrades: the chiseled profile of the Gondorian turned towards the moon-like visage of the Orocuen, who resembled some placid Eastern deity. With a sudden heartache Haladdin realized that their strange fellowship was almost over – in only a few days their paths will diverge, probably forever. The baron, once his wound heals completely, will head to the Cirith Ungol pass – he decided to make his way to Prince Faramir in Ithilien – while the sergeant and he will have to decide what to do next.

It was strange, but having gone through several potentially fatal adventures alongside Tangorn, they have not really found out anything about his previous life. (“Are you married, Baron?” – “Well, that’s a complicated question, can’t just answer yes or no.” “So where is your estate located?” – “I don’t think that’s important any more, no doubt it has been confiscated.”) Nevertheless, with every passing day Haladdin had more and more respect, if not quite love, for this slightly ironical man of few words. Looking at the baron, for the first time he could relate to the idea of ‘inborn nobility.’ Another quality he could sense in Tangorn was unusual for an aristocrat – dependability, of a kind different from, say, Tzerlag’s, but quite certain all the same.

Being of the third estate, Haladdin had always had a lukewarm view of aristocracy. He could never understand how one could be proud not of the actual achievements of one’s ancestors, whether in work or war, but rather of how far one could trace their genealogy, especially since most of those “noble knights” had been nothing but (to call a spade a spade) lucky and ruthless highway robbers, murder their trade and betrayal their calling. Besides, the doctor had despised idlers since childhood. Still, he felt subconsciously that were the useless and immoral aristocracy to disappear, the world would irretrievably lose some of its color; most likely it would become more just, perhaps more clean, but for sure more dull, and that alone is worth something! After all, he himself was part of a brotherhood much more exclusive than any based on heredity; Haladdin knew with absolute certainty that he had been knighted by Someone much more powerful than the King of the Reunited Kingdom or the Caliph of Khand. Isn’t it strange that almost nobody realizes how undemocratic science and art are by their very nature …

The sergeant interrupted his musings by suggesting they draw for the first watch. A small desert owl drifted like a giant feather some fifteen feet over their heads, its mournful hoot reminding all the good children to go to bed already. “You crash, guys,” Haladdin offered, “I’m going to clean up, too.” Actually, this whole evening – with a fire, however well concealed, and no sentry for a while – was a major security lapse. However, Tzerlag had judged the risk to be very small, since the search for Eloar had been called off and Elvish patrols do not stray far from the highway otherwise. After all, people have to relax sometime; constant vigilance can backfire, too.

The fire had died down in the meantime – salsolas produce almost no embers, turning directly into ash – and Haladdin put Tzerlag’s ‘Khandian’ bowl into the brewing pot and took it down to the stream to wash up. He had already put the clean pot down on the shore gravel and was warming fingers numb from icy water with his breath when quick flickers on the surrounding boulders told him that the fire was building up again. Who’s still up? – he wondered, – can’t see anything against the firelight … The black silhouette by the fire was motionless, its hands stretched towards the quickly rising orange flames. The circle of light widened smoothly, illuminating their piled packs, Tangorn’s crutches leaning against a boulder, and both sleeping forms … Both?! So who’s sitting by the fire? Suddenly the doctor realized something else: he had gone on his twenty-yard dishwashing mission without any weapons. No weapons at all, which probably had just doomed his sleeping friends.

The person sitting by the fire turned unhurriedly towards the hapless sentry and made a commanding beckoning gesture. It was clear as day that had he so desired, all three of them would have been dead by now. Haladdin made his way back to the fire in a kind of a daze, sat down opposite the black-cloaked intruder – and caught his breath as if hit with a body blow: the closely drawn cowl concealed nothing but emptiness, with two dim scarlet embers gazing intently at him from the inside. He was facing a nazgúl.

CHAPTER 15

T 
he Nazgúl! An ancient magical order, ever surrounded by most dire rumor. Black wraiths supposedly in touch with the highest powers of Mordor; the miracles ascribed to them were such as no serious person would ever believe. Nor had Haladdin believed that, but now a nazgúl was here for his soul … Having said that common phrase in his mind, he almost bit his tongue. Despite being a skeptic and a rationalist, Haladdin had nevertheless always understood clearly that some things are better left untouched, lest one lose his fingers … Suddenly he heard a voice, quiet and a little husky, with a hard-to-place accent, issuing, it seemed, not from the darkness under the hood, but from somewhere off to the side, or from above:

“Are you afraid of me, Haladdin?”

“Well, how shall I put it …”

“Put it straight: yes, I’m afraid. You see, I could have assumed … er … a more neutral appearance, but I’ve too little strength left. So please bear with me, it’ll not be for long. Although it must be creepy to one unused to such things.”

“Thank you,” Haladdin answered gruffly, feeling his fear suddenly dissipate without a trace. “Could you at least introduce yourself, since you know me but I don’t know you?”

“Actually, you do know me, if only by hearsay: Sharya-Rana, at your service.” The edge of the cowl dipped in a small bow. “To be more precise, I was Sharya-Rana in my previous life.”

“Amazing!” Now Haladdin was sure that he was dreaming, and tried to behave accordingly. “A personal conversation with Sharya-Rana himself – I would’ve gladly given five years of my life for that. By the way, you have a rather interesting lexicon for a Vendotenian who lived more than a century ago.”

“It’s your lexicon, not mine.” Haladdin could have sworn that for a split second the emptiness under the cowl coalesced into a smirk. “I’m simply using your words, it’s no effort for me. But if you dislike it …”

“No, it’s fine.” Delusion, sheer delusion! “But tell me, honored Sharya-Rana, they say that all the Nazgúl are former kings?”

“There are kings among us, too, as well as doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, and such. As you can see, some of us are mathematicians.”

“So is it true that after publishing
The Natural Basis of Celestial Mechanics
you turned completely to theology?”

“Yes, but that, too, is all behind me, in my former life.”

“And when you leave those former lives, you simply shed your tired flesh and acquire unlimited powers and immortality?”

“No. We are long-lived, but mortal. Indeed, we are always nine – that is the tradition – but members of the Nine change. As for unlimited powers … it’s really an unimaginably heavy burden. We are the magic shield that had for ages protected the little oasis of Reason in which your light-minded civilization had so comfortably nestled. It is absolutely alien to the World in which we had to be born, and Middle Earth is struggling against this alien presence with all the might of its magic. When we manage to absorb a blow, we dematerialize, and then it is simply very painful; whereas when we make a mistake and a blow reaches your little world … What we feel then has no name in any human language: all the World’s pain, all the World’s fear, all the World’s despair is the payment for our work. If you only knew how emptiness can hurt …” The burning coals under the hood seemed filmed with ash momentarily. “In other words, you shouldn’t envy us our powers.”

“Forgive me,” Haladdin mumbled. “None of us even suspect … they tell all kind of tales about you … I myself thought that you’re phantoms that don’t care about the real world.”

“On the contrary, we do care a lot. For example, I’m well acquainted with your work.”

“Really?!”

“Yes, quite. Congratulations: what you did the year before last with your study of nerve tissue will inaugurate a new era in physiology. Not sure that you’ll make it into a school textbook, but a university course certainly … provided that after the recent events this world will ever have textbooks and universities.”

“Yeah?” Haladdin was doubtful. Sure, to hear this kind of praise from Sharya-Rana himself (provided that this was, indeed, Sharya-Rana) was pleasant beyond belief, but the great mathematician seemed not so competent in a foreign subject. “I’m afraid that you’re confusing a few things. I did indeed achieve some good results studying how poisons and antidotes function, but that work with nerve fibers was just a fleeting whim. A couple of cute experiments, a hypothesis that still needs a lot of checking …”