“So they have sailed.†The words hung in the chilled air of the bedroom, forming white clouds that sought the light streaming in from the window.
She turned to gaze down at him, and ran her hand along his chest. He fingers felt the small scars of millennia of abuse, the white traceries of a past that had never been filled with love, not for a long time. His mind flew back to a barely remembered past, and a woman who had bore him through pain and torment. He struggled for a moment, to try and picture her face, her name…anything. He could not, but for a moment the sadness gave him relief- Until sharp pain brought him back.
Icy wind whipped through the window and across the fresh welt on his chest. She stood up and walked to the window to gaze out over the sea.
“You know he is coming,†she said, turning to stare directly at Osgarcam, her lips curled up in a smile at the puzzled frown. “Dindraug, you do remember him don’t you?†She turned to the sea and breathed deeply. Below her, waves lashed the shore, pulling back pebbles from the island, pebbles that it had thrown up there in an eternal war.
“I did not know.†Said the man, his face expressionless. But she knew what was in his mind, she always did. A flash of memory, of happy smiles and friendly kisses then anger and loss followed by betrayal, murder, a duel in the ruins and a long bitter journey.
“You should stop living in the past, you should not dwell on him anymore.†He felt her hands gently take his face, and her lips softly kissed his eyes, and cheek, and lips pressing hard against him. Then she stood again, tiring of this game. She picked up a discarded robe and wrapping it around her shoulders, she swept from the room.
He lay on the bed for a time, unmoving, his eyes firmly closed against the reality that surrounded him. He ran his tongue along his lips, tasting the salt tang; of blood or spray from the open window he could not tell. He looked again, seeing the bindings that held him against the thin mattress and the cold carvings of the room. Shapes like great eagles, and carvings of trees and mountains long since sank beneath the waves, shapes whose stories he could barely remember. He shivered as he lay there, watching the sea spray turn to ice on the windowsill, as the sweat on his body froze.
It was an hour before she sent somebody to find him, to untie him. A shuffling petty dwarf, with vindictive eyes who pulled the leather taught as she untied him and resorting to a sharp little knife for one piece that would not separate. The blade nicked his skin, salt immediately finding the wound so he bellowed a curse. The dwarf backed off then fled, leaving the Prince of his people to free himself. He looked down at his hollow and battered form; he had ruled this land once. He had built this castle against the darkest foe imaginable, not realising what could be fouler still. A woman spurned is darker than the dark foe of the world, and he was her play piece.
He stretched out his limbs, feeling blood circulate painfully into the tired vessels, and stood. Crossing to the wall opposite his bed he took down the beautiful elfin blade and gazed at it. Long ago, his father had presented himself and his brothers with these blades, long and curved like flowing water and as cold as ice, and swore them to retrieve the gift. He had lost this before Thangorodrim, but she had kept it and given it to him when she saved him. He had been her servant since, slave to her as much as to the oath he had broken. Pushing his hand through his long hair, he saw the last of the summer sunlight turn it to burnished copper. He smiled briefly, remembering how popular that hair had made him, and fastened it back with a small silvery ring. He dressed himself, and looked out of the window, at the far off shore of Lindon.
He remembered when he had first seen her; a dark human queen riding with the clans of Uldor the accursed. She had stood proud like the empress of the world as fate and war had pushed them apart. He remembered the look in her eye, when he was forced to flee with what was left of his household. He was her possession.
He remembered how she had taken him finally, in a dark crevasse where the ruins of the fortress of her former master spewed lava onto the plains of Narthalf when in his last despair he had thrown himself into the pit, and she had caught him. She had kept him, and his prize. A gift, his father had called it; the last and most bitter fruit of Valinor.
He left the room and walked the short distance to the battlements, and stood there to face the full force of the wind. As rime frost coated his hauberk he looked intently across the dark sea, searching for the ship that he knew would soon be here.
Dindraug, the Avari betrayer. Emotions surfaced that had been hidden for a long time and his hand subconsciously slipped to the knife he kept on his leather belt. Long ago, in the birch woods of Nimbrethil, Dindraug and they had fought and Dindraug’s knife had been left in the Noldor’s leg. The fight had been unresolved, the issue had been undecided and in the end Eönwë himself stepped in and healed the bloody Avari and the battered Noldor. For an instant, Osgarcam remembered his past so vividly he could touch it. A single tear, like a bright crystal trickled from his eye, to be blown away in the howling wind.
“You dwell on the past too much my brave knight†said the sultry voice behind him. He turned to face her, hiding his anger.
“He is coming for you too, my Lady.†The Noldor’s voice was barely a whisper, but she heard, and she nodded.
“Yes, I have known him for a long time and hunted him for longer still. He is the last of his kin, and he hates me more than anything for that. I find that quite stimulating.†Her eyes flicked across the cold northern seas, ancient eyes that had once knelt before Morgoth as his most trusted servant. She smiled deeply, her mind flitting across the seas to the north where a lesser servant valiantly flew his ancient beast against the storm, and into the depths of her castle where another cringed in a dark room with the chest with that which all coveted; but none could face. He could sense his hatred in the dark, his anger, his angst; his impotence.
She looked out again, and laughed at the winds, and the world and the Doors of the Night where her former lover had been cast. And at the ship of fools who bravely faced the icy waters of the Northern Wastes to bring one who had escaped her for so long into her care.
The last of the Oathbrakers.