Chapter Four

Andagora descended the stairs to the cavern under Barad-d�r. She loved the way the orcs slunk out of her path, as she moved so seamlessly from step to step that it appeared that she was gliding. She got a real rush off of it; the fear and respect, that was. It wasn't quite like the respect and adoration that her own people had accorded her, but if she wanted fanatical devotion, that's what the Nine were for.

Well, perhaps it wasn't quite the same, she reflected. After all, not all of her royal subjects were practically killing their undead selves to get under her robes.

No, when all was said and done, there were no days like the old days, when she and her brother Cawel ruled Rh�n together in peace. She remembered holidays they took as children to the Iron Hills, and their strong keep on the cliffs overlooking the Sea of Rh�n. Even after all these Ages, these centuries bearing down on her, her memory cluttered with the blood of those she'd killed, she could clearly recall every second of the last peaceful day of her life.

She was nineteen, and on the back of her horse. The sun shone on her red hair, blowing loose behind her like a banner in the wind. She and her brother were hawking near the forest near their keep. Her head was thrown back as she watched her bird turning lazy circles in the sky as it searched for its quarry. She was just thinking how sad it would be to tie the bird back to its jesses when she heard a distinct twanging sound, followed by a swift hiss and a sickening wet thump. Slowly, as though she were under water, she turned her head to see her brother slump in his saddle. She could feel time grinded to a halt, and the next few moments were a blur of confusing noises and disjointed images. Her own scream, sounding strangely foreign in her ears; her brother falling from his saddle, brought down by his own limp weight; the huge arrow sunk so deep into his back that it protruded from his chest; the sickly red stain spreading rapidly across his tunic; and everywhere people shouting as horses whinnied in fear. These things hung suspended in her mind, unhurriedly lingering as though they had taken hours instead of mere moments.

She had only vague snatches to remind her of what had come next. She could never recall where the sword had come from, only that she suddenly realized it was in her hands. Blind fury swept over her, and she knew nothing of the world, save that it was full of heavily armed men trying to kill her. She watched, a spectator in her own head, as she swung her blade and felled them one by one.

She never knew how she came to be running madly through the wood with the few of her guards who had survived. She knew only that she must keep running if she wanted to live. After a while, she became aware that she was alone, and was staggering weakly. No one pursued her. She was at the far edge of a small clearing, bathed in the orange glow of the sun an hour before it sets. She stopped, listening to the stillness of the deep forest, thinking for one moment of her hawk, probably still somewhere above her, before she collapsed.

The first thing she saw when her eyes opened was the cold gleam of moonlight reflecting off the bracelet on her left hand. Odd, it was as if she had never really seen it before, as though it belonged to a stranger. She stared at the bracelet, a wide, heavy bangle embossed with the crescent moon of Rh�n. There was a large chink in the metal where it had shielded her from a sword stroke; her wrist was only nicked, but the impact had caused it to swell and bruise. Slowly, painfully, she reached up to try and move the bracelet off the swollen wrist, but the skin had risen to meet the metal, and she could not make it budge. She moaned a little at the tenderness.

"Be silent!" a voice from above her suddenly hissed.

Andagora stiffened. What she had taken in the dark for a cluster of trees blocking the moon and stars from her view was actually a tall person wearing a black cloak.

"Who are-" she began to whisper, but she was cut off as the black figure suddenly stooped silently and covered Andagora's mouth with her hand. Andagora looked up to see a woman's face peering out of the cloak's shadowy hood. Her skin was so pale that it glowed almost white in the moonlight, and her eyes gleamed black. She was looking somewhere into the distance through the dark trees when her eyes suddenly widened. She flattened herself to the ground, pulling her cloak over Andagora's head as she did.

"Be still if you want to live," she hissed. "Make no noise."

Andagora lay as quietly as she could. She realized that her body was still stiff from laying on the forest floor for at least a few hours, and she was beginning to become cramped from staying in the same position. She became painfully aware of a sharp stick poking into her back, but she did not dare shift to alleviate the twinge. She had no idea what sort of danger the woman thought might be out there. She was an excellent tracker, and she could hear nothing. The wood was still and silent.

After a moment, she began to shift, annoyed. The leaves rustled ever so slightly as she moved. Before she could move any further, the woman's hand clamped down on her arm. Andagora froze as the icy fingers dug into her bruised skin. Just then, she heard a faint rustling coming from the other end of the clearing. The rustling soon became the tramp of armed men hacking their way through the underbrush.

"Right then lads," a low, gruff voice said terrifyingly close by. "She can't have disappeared. Be on your guard."

Andagora held her breath. She could feel the woman next to her tense as the men tramped by inches from her head. She could hear the snuffling of dogs coming closer. One was only a foot away from her, straining at its leash and barking.

"Come now, boy," another man growled. "That's just a rock, that is. Get on!"

The woman's hand remained tightly clamped to her arm long after they footfalls had died away. Only then did she slowly release her grip, pulling back her cloak as she did, and taking her other hand from Andagora's mouth. She rose as silently as she had stooped, hauling Andagora to her feet as she did so. Andagora noticed that despite the woman's height, Andagora was still taller than the stranger.

"Who are you?" Andagora asked in a whisper. "How did you find me?"

"They are all dead, your friends," the woman said, so softly that it did not echo in the clearing. "Your guards searched for you, but Byrgen's men found them first. They have been hunting you for hours."

"Byrgen?" Andagora nearly choked on the name. " The head of Rh�n's army? Not our Byrgen. . ."

"I assure you it is true," the woman said, a steely edge creeping into her low voice. "We saw what was happening, and we raced here to try and stop it, be we arrived too late. By the time we arrived, your brother and most of your guards were dead, and you were nowhere to be found. It took me hours to track you down."

"Who are you? What do you want from me?" Andagora asked, drawing away from the stranger.

"I am called Gayawen," the woman said, drawing back the hood of her cloak. Andagora stared. In the moonlight, silvery ornaments glinted in the stranger's black hair, which was pulled back to reveal her conspicuously pointed ears. She regarded Andagora gravely, her dark eyes fixed on Andagora's own.

"What," said Andagora slowly. "Do the elves want with me? Why have you been watching Cawel and I?"

"Elves?" Gayawen asked, her mouth puckering. "The elves don't want anything to do with you. It is rare that they trouble themselves with mortals. I am the only elf here tonight."

"You said we."

Gayawen raised her eyebrows. "Ah, so I did. You are quick. My husband and I. He, of course, is no elf, but is of the Maiar."

Andagora gaped a moment before recovering herself. "If this is true, then why are you here? What could a Maia and an elf want with me?"

"To give you power. The same power you are being denied by this Byrgen, this upstart general who seeks your throne. We want to give you the power to rule your people well. We too have been made outcasts by our people. We want to make you part of a legend."

"What in all the hells are you talking about?" Andagora asked, exasperated. "What is it about you elves, that you just can't say what you mean, you have to talk in circles until you're blue in the face and the rest of us are too confused to know front from back? I don't mean to be ungrateful or anything, but could you just get to the point, please?"

Gayawen put her hands on her hips huffily. "Look, little mortal princess," she fumed. "I don't know where you get off insulting me like that. I'm an elf, OK? We have certain customs, right? I was trained in oration, and I think that it's sort of a treat when one of my kind . . . " She trailed off, pausing a moment, gazing up at the sky. Then she sighed. "Oh, fuck it. Look, I had this whole speech planned, but you're right, it's kind of dumb. Sorry. See, you're right, we elves kind of like to . . . I don't know. Talk more about the shit we're doing than actually do it, I suppose. I'm trying to break myself of the habit, really, but I was just all caught up in this whole canonical thing Sauron was trying to do, you know?"

"Sauron? 'The Abhorred?' That's the Maia you're married to?"

Gayawen sighed again. "Yeah. Look, he's really not a bad guy, he's just kind of got a bad rap with the elves."

"Is that why they cast you out?"

"What? No, that was for something else. Look, I'll tell you all about that another time. It wasn't for anything major, I swear."

"OK."

"OK. Here's the deal. My husband has this plan to consolidate all the power in Middle-Earth. But he realizes he can't just be this massive dictator-type overlord, and recognizes the need to let the different races govern themselves. So he's given out these, um, . . .well these ringsofpower, and-"

"These what ?" Andagora asked.

"Rings of power. Look, I know it sounds a little silly, but he's got this sort of over-developed sense of how things will be looked at in posterity, and he feels that rings of power are the way to go on this."

"It's jewelry," Andagora said. "What about, like, swords of power? Wouldn't that be a little more effective? 'Oh, I'm going to take over Middle-Earth with my necklace! Cower in fear!'"

Gayawen groaned. "See, I knew once I got another thinking woman involved she would see it this way. You've got lots of rings, right?"

"Dozens."

"OK then. Well, I guess it's different with men. They have swords up the ass, but they see a pretty ring, and it's all like 'Oooooh! Mystical!' That and Sauron was saying there's this whole warrior tradition about the chief being a 'ring-giver' or something, because rings are valuable but easy to carry, and don't get in the way when you're fighting, and, well, really more about the whole tradition thing. Something about how he was reading this book about a guy who rips this monster's arm off . . . you know what, it's not important. I don't understand half of what he says when he starts in on his whole 'master plan' anyway."

"Ugh, I know what you mean," Andagora agreed. "My father was always talking about . . . anyway men, right?"

"Exactly," Gayawen said, nodding. "So anyway, the power-structure is going to be this trickle down thing, sort of. He has the master ring, and then ten mortals are going to have rings, and three elves, and seven dwarves."

"Really, seven dwarves?"

"Yeah."

"You know, my nurse used to tell me this story about a princess who-"

"Yeah I know. I tried to warn him about that, but he said that the rings were already forged, and that once he unleashed their power, no one was going to make that connection anyway."

"Any little girl who wanted to be that princess will."

"I know, I know!" Gayawen groaned. "See, you have to understand that when I met Sauron, he was already hundreds of years into this project, and he'd been thinking about it for a really long time. Anyway, he said he couldn't change the number of dwarves now because of . . . becauseofthepoem . . . "

"The . . . did you say poem ?"

Gayawen rolled her eyes. "Yes, yes I did."

"There's a poem?"

"OK, what did I say about the overdeveloped sense of posterity thing?

"Riiiiight," Andagora grinned. "So, um, can I hear this little poem thing?"

Gayawen bit her lower lip, embarrassed. "Fine, whatever." She cleared her throat.

"Three Rings for the Elven kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for the Mortal Men doomed to die,

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Happy?"

Andagora giggled. "Wow, he really came up with that on his own?"

"He's a Maia, they're all really deep and prophetic like that."

"Right. So, um, I though you said that there were ten mortals who were getting rings? And I notice you only mentioned mortal men?"

Gayawen groaned again. "Man, this is really shaping up to be a chore. Why can't you just take the damn ring and kick Byrgen's ass already?"

"Because I'm not an idiot," Andagora smirked, folding her arms across her chest. "I never sign anything without reading the fine print. Ever."

"Fine, fine!" Gayawen said. "Damn it, I told him this was going to happen! Why can't! He! Just! Ever! Fucking! Listen! To! Me!" she fumed between clenched teeth, punctuating her words by kicking the trunk of the nearest tree. "Ow! Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

"Hey, I'm sorry, ok?" Andagora said. "I know it's not your fault. Why don't you just go on with your story, ok?"

"OK," Gayawen mumbled, adjusting her dress. "What was I saying again?"

"You were just about to tell me why you only mentioned nine mortal men in that poem, and why there was nothing about a mortal woman."

"Right. OK, so like I said, Sauron already had this thing going when I met him. He'd already come up with the poem and was in the process of having the rings forged. Anyway, he's always been a bit of a chauvinist. It comes of hanging out with Melkor and A�le all those years."

"The Valar? The Valar are sexist?"

"Well, Melkor was just generally an ass to everyone and everything, and it's my understanding that A�le was kind of like, 'Only men are strong enough to create things in my forge of the world' Yavanna, his wife, was kind of like 'OK A�le, I'll just go play in the flowers!' See, before Sauron took up with Melkor, he was kind of A�le's apprentice."

"Gotcha. So, go on."

"Anyway, he had already come up with poem and the plan, like I said, but he had forgotten a few key factors. Like the fact that there are a few female rulers among elves and men. So I had to convince him to bend things a little and add a couple of women, and he said he would, but he wasn't going to change the poem. So that's the one big catch, really. You get the ring of power, which enables you to rule your people and do a bit of sorcery and fight like a fiend, Sauron's your overlord, but you don't get to be in the poem."

Andagora chewed on this for a moment. "There's always a catch, isn't there?"

"Yeah, pretty much. But hey, that's life."

"Well," Andagora began. "It sounds like a pretty good deal. With Sauron as my overlord, I wouldn't be in constant danger of invasion."

"Exactly! Ooh, and did I mention that the ring will increase your lifespan?"

"No shit? Cool. Well, I guess I don't mind being left out of the poem if you don't."

"Uh, what do you mean?"

"Well, you know. You're not named in there as the fourth elven queen, right?"

"Um, actually, the one elven queen is being lumped in there with the two elven kings."

"And you don't mind that everyone who hears the poem is going to thing you're a man?"

"Well, now that you come to it, I'm not one of the elves in the poem at all."

"What? Why? Aren't you his wife? Why couldn't he make you a ring?"

"Hey now, no fair! I have a ring," Gayawen said, holding out her hand indignantly. There on her finger gleamed a beautifully wrought ring of some black metal. "It's a ring that links me to Sauron and gives me a measure of his power. It's just not a ring that has power over a race, that's all."

"Well, why not? Doesn't he think you're good enough to rule the elves?"

"Of course he does. It's . . . it's the elves that don't think so."

"Ohhh."

"Look, I was upfront with you about that. I told you I was an outcast. That's the trick to being a ringbearer. The people you're supposed to be ruling have to already trust you and respect you as a leader. Mine don't, OK? Let's just leave it at that."

"Hey now, I'm sorry."

"Well, don't be. It's not your fault. So, look, do you want the ring or not?"

"Hell yeah, I want the ring!" Andagora crowed. "Why wouldn't I? It's a total win-win situation."

"And you're cool about the poem?"

"Yeah, whatever. It's a stupid poem anyway, no offense."

"None taken."

"And anyway, when we're all ruling the world, who the hell is going to quibble about a dumb poem anyway?"

"That's what I'm saying."

Who indeed, Andagora thought bitterly as she rounded the last bend in the spiral stair. She reflected that if things had turned out differently in the battle against the Last Alliance, she might not have been doomed to obscurity as she was doomed to insubstance. She emerged into the cavern where the Nine (those damned named bastards!) were clustered in a circle, talking together in low, raspy tones. She cleared her throat and they broke up, muttering and abashed as she glided loftily by. She could feel them looking at her behind her back as she made her way to her death-horse. Andagora sighed; it was already starting again. She wheeled around, the ragged edges of her robes swirling gracefully, to face them.

�I�ve just spoken with Sauron,� she said, trying to make her low voice light. �And he�s already on to you. So don�t even start.�

She turned back to the horse and picked up her curry comb, smiling a little as she heard the Nine collectively groan behind her.

�Damn,� the Witch-king muttered. �Just . . .damn.�

Andagora leaned in to whisper in her horse�s ear. �I think I�ll call you Hengest,� she murmured. �Just like in the old days.� The horse gave a dangerous sounding whinny. Andagora smiled. �That a�boy.�