“How long are you going to sit there smoking,” Zairaphel complained from the couch. She batted her hands in the air in an effort to disperse the coiling milky-blue clouds. Her golden hair hung loose, untidy, and she had not bothered to retie the collar of her dressing gown.
Arnoldir turned his chair so it was facing the window and resumed smoking. The western sky was a dusky orange and pink and the high stone walls of the city were ringed with shadows. All within the house was as still as ever, and through the window, there only came a few sounds - a twittering bird, the lowing of cart-oxen, and the calls of the merchants as they shuttered their shops and bid one another good-night.
“I hate the smell of pipe-weed on your breath.”
“Too bad.” He had developed quite a liking for tobacco.The plant was a roadside weed that grew abundantly in wet pastures in Gondor, where it was brought by the Númenóreans in the Second Age. They called it Sweet Galenas and prized it for its fragrant flowers. When he first arrived in the city he watched in bewilderment as the people sat on carpets inhaling vapor from strange, beautiful devices decorated with enameled engraving. He was suspicious at first, but once he saw how contentedly the Umbarrim puffed away without harm, he tried it, and found the custom an exotic pleasure. More than mere comfort, it seemed to clear the clouds from his mind, sharpening his focus, steadying his intellect.
“Fool! Why did you return? Don’t you know my nephew has marked your life forfeit? You would be a corpse already if he were not marrying your sister; it is only for her sake that he granted you exile, rather than execution on the spot. In his mercy he sent you to live among the nomads of Haradwaith for your protection. And what did you do? You squandered his munificence and killed your hosts! With all the gold he gave you, you had enough to secure passage, or even to buy your own ship, and yet you came crawling back here.”
“Somehow I felt like a less wealthier man. I guess I returned because I missed you.”
A gleefully malicious smile spread across her face. “Inzibêl is gone, you know. Your sister chose to accompany Azrazôr to the Northern Wastes. By now the Shakagimil has carried them beyond the Bay of Umbar, far beyond your reach.”
Arnoldir puffed on the hose of the hookah pipe and slowly exhaled a big cloud of smoke. “What was in that drink the dwarf gave me? It wasn’t just Khôrob.”
“He he he! You drank the dread-draught of Ugru-Abâri.*”
“I want more.”
“There is no more.”
“You goddamn women are all alike,” he exploded. “Only thinking of yourselves! Consider what we could have achieved!”
“Overweening little shit,” she spat back, though her eyes lingered on his bare chest. A second dose of the elixir would kill him. While it doubled one’s innate strength, it was highly toxic and invariably fatal. That the Gondorian man survived its effects and escaped the deserts of Shagâna was proof he was favored by the Master.
The minute he stepped inside her room and closed the door she led him over to her couch under the big north skylight. Afterward, he demonstrated a series of fighting movements, still naked, his rippling muscles glistening with sweat as if oiled. At twenty-nine-years of age his body was broad and powerful, without the lean spareness of a younger man. He gripped her with rough, insistent embraces. Although he possessed the means to flee anywhere, he had returned to her. A dog with nowhere to go always finds his way back to the hand that fed him. You survived the desert because the Shadow Lord willed it - now you will stay right where you are, until I decide what other uses I have for that magnificent body of yours.
*: Shadow-Might
