Tales of Older Days (5/8)
Title: Tales of Older Days (5/8): Inez and the Machine
Author: Clodius Pulcher *cough*
Characters: Erestor, A Heroine, An Urchin, A Villain, A Dragon Cub, HenchDwarves and Others. Appearing in this chapter: A Joker, A Dark Lord.
Rating: T for a touch of violence in this chapter.
Book/Source: LotR, Silmarillion
Disclaimer: I am not J.R.R. Tolkien and I make no money from this.
Note: Many thanks to the gorgeously gowned ignoblebard for the cunning schematics! They were indeed VERY CUNNING. To the same ignoblebard and gogollescent I owe inspiration and encouragement, as ever; and thanks again to the lovely crowdaughter for nominating this trivial tale of urchins, dragon cubs and stunningly glamorous lady-villains for MEFA 2010.
Summary: Will the beautiful Lady Inez get to put her Machine through its paces? What will happen to Our Heroine? Is Erestor going to have to wash the dragon cub's toothy mouth out with soap? Read on and find out... MEFA 2010 Second Place in Genres: Humor: Incomplete.
Wordcount: 3817
it was a dark and stormy night | the patter of tiny feet | indulge your local narrator | sleep under stone
~ inez and the machine ~
The Machine was currently installed on one of the Dwarvish wagons standing in The Pony’s yard. In appearance, it was superficially no more than a massive and particularly ornate cabinet constructed from a peculiar greenish-black wood that had been polished to a glossy mirror-sheen; but a long silver lever protruded from the lefthand side and there was nothing ornamental about the iron Dwarvish lock bulging next to it. Lady Inez had already decided to have the lock replaced at the first opportunity, along with the tasteless Dwarvish locksmith. It really spoilt the look of things.
The key, at least, was suitably frightful. She drew it out with a flourish.
“Ma’am,” said Mili at her elbow, “are you sure -”
“Of course I’m sure,” said Lady Inez, who did not appreciate being questioned by her henchpersons and who maintained a mental list of similar transgressions that Mili would very much regret one day, if she had any say in the matter. Which she would. She inserted the key in the monstrous lock, turned it three times, paused for the precisely five seconds required to deactivate the poisoned darts, and then twisted it once more with a flick of her slim wrist.
The glossy door swung open. Inside, a complex array of crystals and interlocking brass gears glittered beneath a protective glass case. The glass was inscribed with eldritch symbols that would certainly be a mystery to just about everyone on this side of the sundering sea; Lady Inez had spent a great deal of time laboriously drawing them out on the journey south down the Greenway. The cabinet itself and most of the gears had been already in place before she had begun this expedition, but she had not known what crystals she would be able to retrieve from the cold-wyrm’s hoard until the deed was done. In the event, she had been decidedly satisfied with her haul. If Dwarves were good for anything, it was recovering treasure.
Lady Inez had inserted the last glittering crystal into its painstakingly prepared socket only the previous evening, mere moments before being informed of the theft of the dragon’s egg. It was small consolation that she would be able to test her handiwork so soon.
“Kindly place the test subject inside, Mili,” she added. “Unless you would prefer to suggest an alternative candidate? Whichever of your Dwarves was meant to have been guarding the chest containing the egg last night would be wholly suitable.”
Mili’s beard was looking particularly repressive. He grunted something indistinct (yet another of his apparently inexhaustible stock of irrelevant antique aphorisms, Lady Inez translated, in the irritable privacy of her own head) and gestured to the flock of heavily-armed Dwarves milling around the Dark Elf, still tied into his chair. The chair was at once hoisted up into the wagon on the shoulders of half a dozen burly Dwarves; a moment’s confusion followed, as it was realised that only the back of the Elf’s head could now be seen; then the chair was turned around in the yawning cabinet and the Dwarves leapt away from the wagon with indecent haste, apparently keen to put a safe distance between themselves and Lady Inez’s Machine.
The Dark Elf wasn’t smirking any more. Lady Inez took that as a personal triumph.
“Thank you,” she said to Mili, who alone still stood, stolid and foursquare, at her side. “I trust we may now proceed.”
“I don’t like to ask,” said the Dark Elf from his chair, eyeing the gears and crystals gleaming on the inside of the Machine’s open door, “but what is this interesting contraption meant to do? The last time I saw writing like that, it was manifesting itself in the mithril mines under Hadhodrond - and before that, scrawled all over the ruins of Tol-in-Gaurhoth -”
Lady Inez was pardonably annoyed by this far from helpful interpolation. “Wait and see, you nosy Avar!” she snapped, thinking it would be just her luck to run into such a well-travelled individual. Tol-in-Gaurhoth was a name that cast long shadows. At the mention of his ancestral home, Mili’s beard had bristled all over with interest; for once, wisely, he said nothing. “What’s a First Age Elf doing wandering around Bree?”
“It’s as good a place as any to wander,” said the Dark Elf sweetly. “Besides, I have friends in the area. What’s a lady with a Númenórean name and a dragon’s egg and a cupboard covered in very nasty writing doing in Bree?”
“Passing through! And I’d have been well on my way, if it hadn’t been for you meddling Dark Elves -”
The Dark Elf yawned. “Of course, of course,” he murmured. “Now about this writing...”
Lady Inez’s hair was beginning to unravel into hungry golden tendrils again. Realising this, she did her best to catch her temper along with her breath. She counted slowly to ten in her head, and then expanded that to twenty when she saw the Dark Elf’s mouth curl.
“I am quite disappointed,” she said, instead of taking Mili’s axe and using it to remove that resurgent smirk. “Surely you intended to attempt a daring escape? Will your companion spring from an upper window to rescue you? Or perhaps you have some other cunning plan to remove yourself from this predicament, now that the last minute has arrived?”
The Dark Elf flexed his wrists under the ropes and grimaced. “Sadly, no. Your henchdwarves are too good with knots. I did consider trying to break free, but the restraints are too tight. So I suppose I’ll have to see what the writing’s for from the inside.”
He did not seem overly concerned by this prospect. Bitter thoughts arose in Lady Inez’s head about the Elvish propensity for levity. If only this Elf had been a Noldo! Lady Inez appreciated the Noldor: they took life seriously, and often. A Noldo would have had the grace to threaten and bluster and swear unwise oaths of impossible vengeance, at the very least.
She said coldly, “You will. And I am done talking with you.”
The wood of the Machine hummed under her fingertips. “Tell my husband -” said the Dark Elf, in the same breath that Mili said, “Husband?” and a thoroughly exasperated Lady Inez demanded, “Did I express an interest in last words?” as she slammed shut the polished door.
With a whirring and clicking of internal gears, she wrenched the silver lever right down to the ground. It sounded like clockwork being wound up, which was approximately the case. When Lady Inez released the lever, it shuddered and began to grind back into its original upright position, one jarring notch at a time. A faint white light glowed around the edges of the door, growing gradually brighter as the brass gears within the Machine continued to revolve.
“Husband?” said Mili again, sounding a little sickened. “Was the Elf - a woman?”
Dwarves did have such absurd scruples. “Not necessarily,” said Lady Inez, trying to concentrate on the noises the Machine was making. She had been obliged to substitute a number of jewels and was not completely sure how the alterations would affect the outcome of this experiment. Everything seemed to be working satisfactorily so far. “I recall I once viewed some positively educational frescoes in what remained of Gondolin -”
Abruptly, the Machine began to shake violently on its carved claw-feet. A barely-muffled scream from the test subject cut through the air, informing Lady Inez that she would have to improve the Machine’s soundproofing. The light was almost unbearably brilliant.
Any moment now...
With a flash, the light went red and snapped out. The Machine juddered into stillness.
Red? That wasn’t meant to happen. Those rubies, Lady Inez was thinking crossly as she fumbled with the lock: she should have known better - she had known better - if she’d only thought to bring along a couple of spare amethysts - but what difference would it make to the results of the experiment? Would it make any difference at all? Her calculations hadn’t indicated -
She flung open the door. The test subject was slumped forwards against the ropes securing him (or possibly her) to the chair. His (or possibly her) head hung slack, a string of saliva drooling from the gaping mouth. The braided hair had come loose from its ties and fell in a wild mass of fine plaits all about the subject’s head and shoulders.
It was pink.
Bright pink. A flock of flamingos gorged on canthaxanthin could not have been pinker.
“What?” said Lady Inez blankly. “Why did that happen?”
Beneath the peculiar pink braids, the subject’s heartbeat was strong. When Lady Inez lifted up his (or her) chin, though, that androgynous Elvish face might have been a wax mask. Peeling back the eyelids revealed pupils contracted to pinpricks and no sign of consciousness whatsoever. The subject was wholly unresponsive. The Machine was not much better: the crystals embedded in the door no longer glowed and the inscribed sigils were dark and lifeless. The last of the gears spun slowly to a halt under Lady Inez’s eyes.
Damn.
“She’s not dead, ma’am!” blurted Mili, seizing on the blindingly obvious in his usual helpful way. He was leaning forwards on his iron-soled toes, his beard eager. “She’s still breathing! The Machine didn’t kill her!”
Lady Inez scowled into the subject’s comatose face. Now that she was looking for it, she could tell the subject probably was female, which helped nothing at all. Mili and his Dwarves would undoubtedly want to be chivalrous - not that chivalry would do the subject any good at this stage, if the Machine had even partly achieved its purpose. Lady Inez had had such high hopes of separating Elves from their fëar as a means to control them. Maybe it would work better on mortal subjects.
She realised Mili was awaiting a response. “Naturally,” she said. “Why would I build a Machine to kill people? I have you to do that for me. Now kindly remove the Elf to somewhere more appropriate. Put her with the artefacts. I’ll need to run more tests on her.”
Mili tugged at his beard in a transparent attempt to disguise the suspicion currently radiating from the top of his shiny helmet to the iron soles of his boots. “Tests, ma’am?”
“Yes, Mili, tests,” said Lady Inez coldly, adding this latest hint of insubordination to the mental charge-sheet. Maybe Mili should be the Machine’s next test subject. That would be a thoroughly suitable punishment. “Obviously it will have to wait until my property has been recovered from the other Elf and that wretched little thief who stole it in the first place. And be so good as to bring me their heads, while you’re at it. I believe I’ll have them preserved as a warning for anyone else who thinks it might be a bright idea to steal from me.”
~*~*~
The dragonet was discovering cream. Noisily.
A broad dish filled to the brim sat on the dark polished table. All around glimmered a maze of yellow candles, which was perhaps imprudent, since the dragonet had taken to cream like a frog to a lily-pool. Little white paw-prints and gradually merging puddles were already splattered across the table, and the dragonet itself was hanging half into the dish with its tail knotted around the base of a nearby candlestick, its muzzle deep in the cream and flapping its translucent silver wings frantically every time it seemed about to lose its balance. Bubbles swirled on the foaming surface.
Gogol, whose feet hurt more than ever and who did not like mushrooms, was sulking.
Chasing Erestor across the Barrowdowns had not made for a pleasant afternoon. She had scurried and stumbled and pulled grotesque faces up at the bright blue serpent-eyes smirking out of the Elf’s hood; and when, after much whining, she had convinced the Elf to take a break for lunch, they had rested for a bare twenty minutes before moving on. Lunch, which had emerged from Erestor’s leather bag in the form of stale bread and a piece of hairy cheese, had been decidedly unsatisfactory. Didn’t the Elf have anything better? No, said Erestor shortly; and furthermore the dragonet had made a feast of the pair of partridges stored in his wife’s bag, so unless Gogol stopped complaining and started walking, there would be nothing better for dinner either. No wonder the little beast purred so happily against the absentminded touch of his fingertips.
There was blood in the west and the stars were out by the time they came to the crumpled edge of the downs. Ahead, the Elf’s shadow blended seamlessly into the darkening dusk. Only the glimmer of the dragonet on his shoulder kept him from disappearing entirely, a ghost on silent feet striding over the springy grass. Stumbling miserably behind, Gogol had been too fixated on her aching legs to notice when the track first became a stone-edged path.
One foot in front of the other. Her battered boots were lead-heavy. She had trudged glumly onwards up the slope, not really caring any more where she was going, or why, until she collided with a solid round body in the dark and rebounded with a surprised yelp.
Before her loomed a terrifying shadow, bulbous and deformed, blotting out the friendly glimmer of distant yellow lantern-light with its hugeness. She had scrabbled backwards in panic, recalling the cadaverous wight in its barrow.
“Hey now,” boomed a deep voice, “where be you a-going to? Are you not come seeking Tom Bombadil’s house under Hill?”
And then, to Gogol’s horror, the monstrous figure had removed its own head.
If there had been more light, she might have made it to the river (and then fallen in) before Erestor caught up with her. As it was, she was still accelerating when she felt the Elf’s hand on the back of her collar. Because it was dark and his fingers were cold, she thought it must be a Barrow-wight and let out a howl of terror. It was not much comfort to have Erestor say irritably, “Oh, do shut up!” and give her a brisk shake. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“But - b-but -”
“This is Iarwain ben-Adar,” said the Elf, with a nod for the shadowy figure advancing down the slope. “The Master of wood, water and hill. Also known as Tom Bombadil.”
The shadowy figure had resolved itself before Gogol’s astounded eyes into that of a plump old man attached to a beard worthy of one of Mili’s Dwarves. Under his arm, he carried a tall-crowned hat, which he now replaced on his head. “Erestor!” he cried, and followed that up with a string of silky nonsense that Gogol supposed must be Elvish. His voice was deep and merry.
“Yes, yes, quite,” said the Elf, in Westron. “He never did have much of a sense of humour. I’ll have a word with Elrond when we’re next there. Sorry, but may we go in? It’s been a long day. Melinna and I were on our way here when we ran into something very odd going on in Bree. And this urchin escaped a flock of feral Dwarves and a Barrow-wight today, and I think she’s about to fall over...”
They had followed the old man, Tom Bombadil, up the slope and over the wide stone threshold into a pool of yellow light. Gogol had still been more than a little dazed. She had collapsed onto the rush-seated chair pulled out for her by Erestor and stared, bewildered, at the vision of clashing colours thus revealed. Old Tom’s coat was blue and his boots were yellow and when he caught her staring, he grinned through his beard, his ruddy face folding into a labyrinth of laughter-lines.
“Are my guests hungry?” he said to Erestor. “Shall Tom set a supper for you?”
“Please,” said Erestor, sinking back into his corner with every appearance of relief. A frown crossed his smooth brow; he reached back over his shoulder and extracted the dragonet from the folds of his shadow-grey hood, where it had been sound asleep like a silver cat. It was curled sluggishly in his hands, blinking its blue eyes and yawning so that all its sharp little teeth gleamed under the light of the lanterns hanging from the ceiling beams. The tip of its tail swung over the polished tabletop.
Old Tom Bombadil had stared, and pulled convulsively at his brown beard. “I don’t suppose,” said the Elf, “you’d know what one of these eats?”
The dragonet sneezed frost all over his fingers. “Aññolë!”
Erestor winced. “No!” he said severely to the dragonet, while Tom Bombadil burst out laughing. “That is not what you eat. Iarwain -”
A swift exchange in Elvish followed, during which Gogol sat uncomprehending and aching and thinking longingly of that promised supper. At last old Tom had glanced over at Gogol, his eyes unexpectedly shrewd, and cried merrily in Westron, “But let us have food and drink while we talk!” So food had appeared, and drinking-bowls of plain water, and now Gogol found herself picking through a dish of mushrooms and half-melted cheese while the dragonet drowned itself ecstatically in its bowl of yellow cream and the Elvish conversation continued over both their heads. All in all, Gogol was beginning to think she might have been better off leaving the iron chest and the dragon’s egg alone.
She was dismally investigating a bowl of green herbs in the hope that it might turn out to contain something other than parsley when she heard her name spoken. “Gogol,” said Erestor again, rapping on the table to attract her attention. “Listen, I’m going back to Bree to see what trouble my wife’s got herself into. You and the dragon will stay here with Iarwain. Iarwain’s wife is visiting her mother, so you probably won’t meet her. Don’t make a nuisance of yourself - no running off to steal treasure from any Barrow-wights, and don’t try stealing from Iarwain either! When Melinna and I get back, we’ll take you with us to Imladris, if Iarwain tells us you’ve behaved yourself. Understand?”
Gogol looked across the table at Tom Bombadil. The old man beamed back.
She quailed.
~*~*~
Either the world swam slowly back into focus, or Melinna swam slowly back into the world. It was very hard to tell the difference. Everything had taken on a reddish tint, glassy and almost translucent, the outlines as sharp as a broken window with the sun pouring through. Except she couldn’t make out any shapes, only edges in the pinkish distance, glittering razor-edged and wet with spilt blood.
She didn’t know where she was and she couldn’t remember why she was there. She was walking on naked feet over an endless blood-lapped shore of glassy shards and it didn’t hurt at all.
It occurred to her to stop and try to work out what was going on.
There were cliffs on her left hand, towering red sandstone cliffs that oozed fluids from layered seams. Something about the shape of them jutting up against the hazy sky seemed familiar, vaguely, in a way too uncertain for specific recall. Beyond the promontory lay caves to be revealed by the retreating tide; Melinna remembered that, at least. But which shore this was, which people claimed it now, when she had last set foot upon these sands - all this was as lost to her as her reason for being there. As how she had got there. As where Erestor was...
Far ahead of her, walking in the shadow of the promontory, she saw a solitary figure wading ankle-deep in the scarlet froth.
Another Elf. His hair was dark and he was pale, his ragged clothing soaked in blood. He was singing to himself in a broken whisper; his voice might have been sweet once, but it was cracked now and the words fell huskily away. Melinna saw, as she came closer, the livid scars that tightened his useless hands to claws.
She knew him then. She knew him and could hear only Nimloth’s screams, Nimloth screaming as Dior fell beneath the stone trees of Menegroth. Nimloth falling in blood as Dior had fallen, Thingol’s heir and Lúthien’s son, beneath Elvish blades. The light in their faces, in his face, bright and blood-laced. She had been blinded by it, by that inner light blazing (because they were blessed, they had said, the homecoming Exiles, because they had seen the Blessed Realm) and the smoke as tapestries woven by Melian the Maia Queen went up in flames.
He went down without a word. He didn’t even seem surprised. The bloody foam swirled all around and once, twice, three times she punched his head against the crystalline sand: Maglor Fëanorion, harpist unhanded, madness brighter than brilliance in his eyes. Bruises already blossomed beneath his skin. She seized his neck, her thumbs pressed hard against his windpipe -
- and stopped, aware suddenly that something was wrong. This was wrong. Somehow.
His hair floated like dark seaweed in the tide. Blood lapped at his face, washing up over his bruised throat. He stared up at Melinna, his lips slightly parted. Her hands were scarlet and the foam blackened the grey skirt of her gown.
She said aloud, “It didn’t happen like this. I only hit him once. Then Erestor stopped me. We had an agreement...”
The tide was coming in. Melinna was aware of it suddenly, and the smash of the waves on the shore.
“You’re not Maglor,” she said. “This already happened. It didn’t happen like this.”
She released him and stepped back. The blood was knee-deep now, swirling around her. She could feel the weight of it dragging down her skirt. Above the red cliffs, a bank of pinkish clouds was piling up in the sullen sky.
Melinna wiped her wet hands down the front of her gown. “Where is this?” she said. “What’s going on?”
The red tide rose up before her, bearing the Elf who was not Maglor with it, so that he seemed to be staring down from a glassy throne. His hair was matted and blood dribbled from his mouth, staining his white teeth. The livid scars that maimed his hands had charred to black. His face was brilliant still, and terrible in its brilliance, more so than any Elf could ever be.
“Behold,” He said, “He who arises in Might.”
“Wait - what -?”
“Here do I reign,” went on the maimed creature on His red throne, “beyond the bounds of Eä or the Ainur, unseen even by Manwë, unheard even by Varda. Here is My dwelling and My domain. I am Melkor and Belegûr, Lord of all that is. Bow down, star-child, and worship me!”
The tide roared in Melinna’s ears. She was still gaping up at Him when the wave’s crest broke above her head, a flood of salt and iron slamming her back into oblivion.
On to Adventures of a Most Lurid Kind
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