(Ambience while writing this piece)
It was difficult to tell when night turned to day from within the Stone Room. More difficult still, when the winter season took hold of the land. A thin, grey light seeped through the insufficient openings in the high walls, but it never seemed to swell towards anything resembling true daylight before fading back into soft darkness.
Her hands felt like ice. The tips of her fingers seemed perpetually numb. The sparse torches in their cradles along the wall did little to stave off the chill. She learned how to move the slender digits by sight and memory, when the sensitive guidance of touch abandoned her.
The guests of her Lord became prone to festerings in their lungs and infections in their loins. Days of breathing frozen dampness and laying upon frigid rock took their toll. It was a ripe opportunity to learn about suctioning vile fluids from rasping throats, and the precious nature of the tiny glass vial of dark violet reduction, taken from berries that could only be gotten in the height of a Gondorian summer. No one was permitted to perish, after all, until it was time.
But even the most steadfast guardian is not infallible. All men are mortal flesh, and can be weakened through various means. This truth carried from the most savage of the dark-skinned foreigners who passed through the Stone Room, all the way to the highest nobility of the city that flourished high over their heads. Her Lord was not immune to its reality. When he first developed a wheezing cough, he did not look at his silent, obedient servant with suspicion. He spoke of being overworked. He decried the winter damp. Perhaps one of the foul, beastly warriors of Far Harad had brought with him an unsavory plague.
It was with a great reluctance, born of immovable arrogance, that her Lord finally submitted the care of the Stone Room to her, and departed for his chambers.
In the days following, an unfortunate and untimely illness did come to manifest itself. Her ears knew no respite from the endless rales and chest-rattles. Bodies continued to be hauled in from the war-fields, but without her Lord to determine a course of interrogation and inquisition, she was left without guidance. The stone tables were filled. Row upon row of writhing, moaning figures. There was no rest for the young woman with shadow-ringed eyes. Sleep became a memory.
As she moved from body to body, testing brows with the back of her hand to see how swiftly heat soaked through her cold skin, she wondered why her own lungs did not seem afflicted. Hourly, she would assess them by taking in a full breath, stretching the elastic organs to capacity. She waited to feel a tightening, a prick of pain, an urge to expel her breath in a cough. But there was nothing. It seemed a cruel joke.
When three nights had passed without a sign or word from her Lord, or any other man of headship, she could bear her lot no longer. Perhaps the city above was festering with the same plague. Perhaps they were dying in their beds, and in the street gutters, like sewer rats. Her cheeks began to feel flushed and feverish, but she knew it was not the lung-sickness of those around her. Her breath was yet vexingly clear and strong. It was exhaustion, coming to collect its due after granting her adequate credit to perform her duties.
She stood near the apothecary’s cupboard at the far end of the room, gazing over the grim scene. There was a bitter sense of injustice, that she should still be here upon her feet, while the man who mentored and instructed her had been permitted to flee.
There was a bottle in her hand. She could not remember picking it up. A low, sickening anxiety began to drum in her chest. Her wits were her greatest tool, her most essential asset. She could not afford to allow her mind to become compromised in this place. Staying one step ahead of those around her had always been the key to her survival. And now, her brain felt soft and faded at the edges, as if someone were wrapping her skull in gauze. She needed to act.
With no hawk-like eyes trailing her movements, she went swiftly. Pulling the small stopper from the bottle, keeping it well away from her nostrils, she approached the first man in the first row of stone tables.
“Open your mouth,” she instructed in a soft tone. Five drops from the bottle, into his throat.
She did not linger, but passed to the next figure. And then the next. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. A tidy number, she thought, to snuff out a life. There would be questions, if ever her Lord reappeared. He knew his stores as well as a mother knew her own children. The emptied bottle would not go unnoticed.
Behind her, the ragged coughs slowly faded. Some of them fought it, their throats rasping and choking. But most were too weary and spent to rail against the inevitable. As she stepped up to the final slab, the quiet that descended in her wake seemed unsettlingly thick. Now, only the ubiquitous drip of the water into the basins remained, along with her tired, trembling breaths.
The bottle was at the ready when she leaned over the supine figure. But to her surprise and alarm, he was staring up at her with wide-open eyes. His bare, whip-scarred chest was rising and falling without any struggle. Taken aback, she swiftly laid her hand on his temple.
“You are recovering,” she murmured in wonder.
Like many of the others she had seen, he was raven-haired and ebon-eyed. His flesh was like dusk and shadow. A curious tattoo curled over his shoulder; a creature she did not recognize, with wide, fan-like ears and a nose like a snake. He opened dry, cracked lips and whispered a strange word. “Water.”
A moment was required for her to realize that he had not spoken in Westron, yet she understood the word. A handful of the alien tongue had been absorbed during her time among the wounded and dying soldiers.
She stood still. Conflicted. Torn. To give him what he asked seemed cruel, when she was intent on ending his life. But something seemed to be steering her limbs, and she found herself walking away. Over to the drinking cistern. Dipping in one of the clay cups. The uncorked bottle still rolled into her other palm.
Returning, she leaned over him and carefully tipped the vessel so that a thin stream trickled into the side of his mouth. His lips came together, his tongue darting out. He panted and groaned, closing his eyes. She was mindful not to give too much, not to make him choke. His hands strove to come up to his face, but his wrists were shackled with chains and bound to the stone beneath him.
“More,” he croaked in his native tongue. “Please.”
Haltingly, she answered in the same language, hoping he would understand her poor attempt. “No. Little.”
His chest rose and fell with the frantic urgency of someone on the precipice between this world and the next, who is suddenly all too aware of how very much they do not wish to perish. For a time, the two figures merely observed each other in silence. The woman stayed stooped over him, studying the dark pools of his eyes, seeking something within them.
There was a sudden brush of something against her chin, and she startled up and back with a wild jerk and a gasp. The bottle sprayed some of its contents in an arc of droplets that landed on the floor with a gentle splatter. With her heart clamoring, she looked to see what had touched her, and saw that the young man’s hand was extended up to the length that the chain on his wrist would allow.
“No!” he said, turning his hand towards her, palm out in a sign of placating. “No.”
“You mustn’t do that,” she hissed in the Common Tongue, drawing a look of bewilderment from him.
A short pause followed, wherein the youth was overcome with a look of regret and despondence. His head lolled back on the stone, his fingers curled into his palm, and his arm dropped limply onto his stomach. He uttered in a low voice, “I die.”
As her pulse calmed, she exhaled carefully to compose herself once more, and approached the figure on the slab. “Yes,” she said in his tongue.
His face rolled over to gaze up at her again. There was an immense and profound sorrow in the black pools now. Something stirred in her breast. She had an abrupt, surreal vision in her mind. This very man, standing free and proud, under a far-off, sun-drenched sky. He was smiling, so bright and free that she could see the outline of each, pearly tooth in his mouth. Beside him was a woman, slighter of build, but equally dark and exotic, her eyes turned up to him in an expression of passionate adoration. Her body was draped in wildly vivid colors, fabrics that billowed in the wind and were scattered with glittering, shining adornments. A bejeweled hand was resting on her swollen belly.
So acute and intense was this vision, that she had gone still where she stood, bent over the young man. Her own eyes had widened with bewilderment, and her jaw was slack. Thus, she did not notice immediately when he extended his hand upwards again. The chain rattled gently through its anchor, each link striking a low, metallic note. Fingertips that were cracked and split from cold and dehydration, brushed over her jaw.
The contact thrust her back into the present once more, and she pulled away, though with less violence. Frowning, she stammered in his own language, “No. Cannot.”
He did not withdraw his hand this time, but stretched it all the more vehemently, until his fingers were splayed, and the shackle pressed into his wrist. “Please,” he rasped.
A tense heat seemed to well up within her, to hear his pleading word and to see the mournful urgency in his eyes. She thought unaccountably of her mother, who had relented her flesh to the whims of others, but had viciously forbidden her daughter from ever following such a path.
“I die!” cried the young warrior, and his chest heaved with a sob. His hand wavered and shook, but he did not repeal it.
Her fingers tightened around the vial in her palm. Why were her feet refusing to move back to him? Why were these few, short steps so difficult?
Quivering breaths were hissing in and out of her nose, while her lips pinched tightly together. The torchlight danced over the man’s visage. Something flickered and sparkled on his cheek.
Exhaling sharply, she commanded her muscles to obey, and closed the distance between them in a single step. One hand reached down to take his questing, seeking fingers. She pressed them to her cheek, instructing herself to ignore whatever sensation was felt there. There was a brief flash of relief and gratitude in the beautiful, exotic eyes while she placed the vial at the corner of his open, panting lips.
“Rest now,” she whispered, and with a tip of her hand, ended his life.
