He
emerged
from the throne room where his master held an eternal vigil. Nothing
escaped
his master’s watchful gaze, including his greatest servant’s most
recent
failure.
He
shuddered, his ghostly shirt clinging to him as if he was sweating.
He was forever naked before his master.
No longer did he have the privacy of his own
mind.
His thoughts were laid bare before
the piercing eye of his lord.
No longer
was his will his own.
His master’s will
came before all pleasure, all vengeance, all pain. A mighty king he
was,
once.
Once there were those who lived to
please him.
His past was no more. His
humanity was no more.
Now he existed...
existed, to please his master; and his master had been displeased.
Shutting
the door behind him, he fought the agony of his... punishment, a
torture that
could not be described or perceived in the minds of living Men, and
sought to
regain the composure befitting the Lord of the Nazgul.
In this temporary moment of weakness, only
one servant of the Dark Lord dared stand near the door, or in the
corridor.
“You failed
greatly this time, old friend,” said a tall, almost wraithlike shape
leaning
against a column.
He spoke the last
words in disgust, almost taunting with them.
“Even for his highest servants, Lord Sauron has only so much
patience.”
The Witch-king
stood a moment.
Unarmored, with no
vesture of earthly raiment, few would see him, let alone perceive him.
This man, this Black Numenorean, was one of
those few.
No wraith was he, but the
tutelage of Sauron gave him powers beyond that of mere mortals.
The Witch-king, too, remembered the lessons
taught by his master.
He was relearning
them every day.
“I have no
friends, Fuinur.
I am the Lord of the
Nazgul.”
A cold look he gave the man, a
piercing look rivaling all but his master’s.
“That man
is dead, Herumor!” The man snarled with disgust, almost spitting that
name
out.
“I am the Mouth of Sauron!
Think not to recall thoughts of the past with
the name of a man long dead.
I am the
Mouth of Sauron, Lieutenant of Barad-Dur!
There is none greater under the Lord Sauron than I!”
A faint
sound issued from the mouth of the Witch-King, almost a sigh. “So you
have
said.
And yet in regions of your heart
hidden even from you, you long for more.
Still a voice speaks to you of love, of life, of joy.”
“That voice
died long ago as well.
Only the voice of
Sauron speaks in me now.”
“You ignore
it, but it is there, stirring you to go into the light once more.
Long ago you forsook the world for the
darkness of this tower.
Do you not
remember the smell of grass?
The taste
of a newly ripened apple? The warm embrace of your lover?”
The Witch-king’s voice almost seemed to grow
warm, and his eyes brightened, as if he could experience these things
once
again by naming them.
“These things are
lost to me, my old friend. I am beyond hope, but you are yet alive, and
are not
beyond salvation.”
The Mouth
of Sauron wavered only slightly before steeling up once again.
Broadly he smiled. “I too am beyond these
things.
I am the Mouth of Sauron.
I have no friends, no lovers.
I am beyond regret, and if these things are
salvation, I am beyond that as well.
I
pass the test.”
As suddenly
as he had softened, the Witch-king steeled up once more, the Lord of
the
Nazgul.
He had opened his heart for the
last time, and the man he would’ve died in life to protect, a man he
would’ve
called brother, had decided it was a test given by Sauron. In fairness,
however, even the Witch-king could not be sure it was not.
The cold sureness of a Nazgul was once more
his.
His eyes darkened, and once more
they gave a dark glare to the Mouth of Sauron.
“The Day
comes soon, Lieutenant, when we shall not have these talks ever again.”
Pulling a cloak from a hook on the wall, the
Witch-king threw it over his shoulders as he took a few paces past the
Mouth of
Sauron.
Then he stopped.
“Know
this.
You may be the Mouth of Sauron,
but I am his Hand.”
The Lord of the
Nazgul continued his walk down the corridor as it began to fill once
again with
life and movement.
The
End