Note: Please be aware that this story contains mature themes related to warfare and slavery, including the use of child soldiers. It doesn't get especially graphic and it doesn’t luxuriate in violence, but it also doesn’t gloss over the brutality involved in raising an army by force. The R rating might be a bit over-cautious, but I thought it better to be safe.

I claim no ownership and desire no profit from this story. My goal is simply to honour Tolkien's work and contribute to the imaginative community that has grown up around it.

I always know when he is haunted by the ghost lady, no matter how he thinks he hides it. His body loses its tension, and his eyes go dreamy and unguarded until, finally, they drift closed, and he sighs, and whispers something too soft to hear, and sits still and quiet until forced to move. And for the next few days, or until the next battle, he walks wrapped in restfulness like a garment. I do not know, have never known, who this ghost lady may be, or why seeing her calms him so, bringing a strange, sad smile to his face and an unnerving gentleness to his manner. At such times I feel haunted too—I almost imagine I can hear a soft voice just out of earshot, like a whisper carried by the sinuous desert winds that swept through the place I called home so long, long ago.

He told me about her, this ghost of his. He calls her the Lady of Tears. He first saw her, he says, during his seventh dry season, on the day his village was overrun, its elders hacked to death or burned in their houses, its women ravished on the spot or dragged away for the sport of the whip-wielding men who drove the endless lines of slaves captured for the armies of the Unblinking Eye. He says he saw her weeping as she walked beside him, the youngest in the column of too-young boys led away from the scene of sudden death to their new lives as soldiers.

If soldiers of the Eye could be said to live.

I remember that day, remember his face, so young and confused and hurt. I remember feeling pity for him, pity that somehow still clung to my bones after vast, numb years spent marching over vast, naked wastelands. I remember remembering another day, a day in the vast desert with its sinuous winds sweeping across the sands, sands that lie far to the north of the burning village where the boy saw the ghost lady who cried as he cried, led away from the scene of sudden death into vast, numb years spent marching ...

I am startled from this hazy, half-dreaming state by a sharp and too-familiar scream. Instantly I am on my feet, running back toward the tent I left only for a moment, needing to move aching, cramping limbs—a moment that I now know had stretched and warped into many minutes as my weary mind yearned for comfort—even the comfort of ghosts.

I berate myself for my selfishness as I run, for it is not I who need comfort, but my young friend who lies in the tent, half-conscious and fevered, blood oozing sluggishly from where his hand used to be.

And now he is screaming.

Before I reach my friend, a figure emerges from his tent and blocks my path. Where has this one come from? Was I really gone so long? I panic, and try to beg, though I hold little hope.

“Please, sir, I must go to him, he is in much pain ...”

The figure before me shakes its head, and I gasp as it holds up a lamp, revealing a face pale and cold as the moon. He—I have seen only men here, so I think it must be a he, though his hair is long and flowing like a woman’s—gestures toward the tent.

“Friend? He, of you?” he asks, his speech somehow melodic even as the words of my people’s language fall haltingly from his lips.

“Yes, yes, he is my friend,” I reply, straining to see past him into the tent. “Please, I must go to him—hear how he cries in pain! I must help him!”

“Friend of you, speak he ... speech of Harad, north?”

I stare blankly at him for a moment, uncertain whether my exhaustion or his lack of fluency impedes my understanding. A moment later, though, his meaning penetrates my mind.

“Yes, he knows the speech of North Harad—I taught him, years ago ...” I shake my head to clear the memories that press in on me as I hear his screams, so young and confused and hurt ...

“Please, I can speak to him—you must let me go to him, I beg you ...”

Much to my shame, I feel tears starting in my eyes. I want only to go to my young friend, to do what I can to soothe his anguish, these wounds of the war he was taken so long ago to fight.

“Peace, peace. Healer am I ... help can I. Friend of me, healer, speech of North Harad, good speaks he. Wait you this place. Healer friend of me, bring I. Help. Wait you this place, yes?”

I nod even as I struggle through the stranger’s fragmented words. I discern “help” and “healer,” and that is enough.

I wonder dazedly what it was I saw in the strange healer’s eyes as he slips past the guards surrounding the prisoners’ camp and hurries off to find—he says—his friend who speaks my language. Never have I seen such eyes! There is a light in them that stirs memories from a lifetime ago and a world away, memories of the night sky when I was very young, before the forced march to the Dark Land and its endless pall. Something in his eyes reminds me of the glittering dome that arched above the vast deserts of my homeland, full of stars as numerous as the grains of sand beneath them.

And yet, there was something else.

Long moments pass before I realize what it was that I saw brimming in those strange, silvery eyes, and even then, I can scarce believe it. Could it truly be kindness I saw? Kindness in the gaze of one who not two days ago knew me as a mortal foe?

Soldiers under the Eye have little chance to learn to recognize compassion, even from allies. Yet from enemies?

Sooner than I expect, the healer is hurrying back, speaking rapidly in quiet tones with a companion who looks strangely familiar. I cannot think to place him, for their speech distracts me, though I know nothing of it. Their words seem to dance, sharp angles emerging only to be whisked away by breathy swirls of sound, rising and falling and seeming to wash over me like cool water, soothing and refreshing both. I think, vaguely, that I would like to hear them sing.

This jumble of impressions washes over me in a matter of seconds, and then they are before me, and the new healer—older and scruffier than his unnaturally elegant companion—is speaking fluently in words I know. I think he must be a master of many tongues, for his speech is only lightly accented.

“My brother tells me you are a friend of the child,” he says, gesturing to the tent. “I will do all I can for him. May I know your name?”

I pause, hesitating. I realize I have been lulled into complacency by the shining eyes and lilting speech of these strangers, yet weariness seems determined to tear down the walls of caution I would build around myself. To give one’s name to an enemy is no small thing, and somewhere in the depths of my mind lurk tales of cruel magicians whose spells cleave minds as swords cleave bodies. What could such a one do with a name? Warily, I look into his eyes, and something in them draws forth an answer.

“Nahkim,” I murmur. I am surprised to hear my name slip out of me so easily, but I find I cannot regret it. Almost before I realize it, I am continuing. “The lad is Jokut.”

“Well met, Nahkim,” the man says. “I will do my best—”

His words are cut short by an agonized wail from within the tent. The other healer hurries into the tent, and the one speaking to me starts after him. I start to follow, consumed with fear for my friend, but a hand on my shoulder holds me back.

“We must work swiftly,” the healer says. “I fear his time grows short, and there is no room within for another.”

I can feel panic clutching at me, clenching my heart. Jokut is screaming again, and somehow the presence of these healers impresses the horrible possibility of his death on my mind in a way no amount of time spent tending to him myself has managed to do. Without thinking, I clutch at the healer’s sleeve.

“Please,” I whisper, and the desperation I hear in my voice makes me tremble. “Please ...”

The healer looks at me with solemn, storm-grey eyes. “I will do all that is in my power to help Jokut,” he says, finding my hand and squeezing it. “Wait here for now, and I will give you news when I may.”

I sink to my knees as the healer disappears into the tent. Soon I hear the rustles of the healers beginning their work—but these reassuring noises are quickly drowned out by Jokut’s tortured voice. When the pain is at its worst, he cries out even as he wanders in dire dreams. I hold my head in my hands and listen to his anguish—it is all I can do if I cannot be at his side.

Minutes pass with agonizing slowness, and then, somewhere in the midst of his fevered ramblings, I hear it—and my heart freezes in my chest. In among his anguished cries—cries for his long-dead father, mother, sister ... cries for companions now surely rotting on the battlefield ... cries for me—he calls for his ghost, his Lady of Tears. He calls for her, and I fear that this strange ghost will hear him, and turn to him with cold and unforgiving mercy, and slay him. Perhaps, I think, her tears will win him passage to the hidden lands of our ancestors. Perhaps such is the best that can be hoped for him, for what kind of life could he have now? Surely it is only willful blindness that makes me think I see kindness in the eyes of those who have no reason to show us mercy. There are no masters so gentle as to make the life of a crippled slave anything other than short and full of agony.

And yet, a sob catches in my throat, and I know I cannot wish him dead. Whatever awaits us in this northern land, it cannot be worse than the living death of endless marches through the endless wastes of lands ever-shadowed by the Eye.

“Have pity on him,” I whisper, not truly knowing to whom I speak. “Have pity on him ... Lady ... anybody. Have pity on him if ever you cared for him.”

Suddenly I sense a presence at my side. My head jerks up, and I see an old man with a long beard and a gnarled walking stick, wrapped in a pale cloak. His appearance unnerves me, but, again, I somehow cannot bring myself to fear.

“To whom do you speak?” he asks. His voice is gruff, but not unkind, and he speaks as if he has known the tongue of my childhood all his life, though he is pale of skin and eye like these victorious northerners.

“Only to the empty night, surely,” I sigh, words falling from my mouth seemingly before they form in my mind. “The boy—there is a ghost who comes to him, he says. I have not seen her. No one else sees her. But she—he says she weeps for him—for his pain. She has pity, he says. She comprehends suffering, he says. He calls her the Lady of Tears. But I—”

I cannot continue. I have neither the words nor the will. What is there to say about this weeping spirit? I shake my head rapidly—when this does nothing to clear my thoughts, I let my face fall into my hands.

“You heard me begging favours from a phantom who surely exists only in the boy’s mind,” I confess. “The boy lies dying in the enemy’s tent, and I have not the courage to wish an end to his misery. And so I ask a shadow of his madness to pity him.”

I lift my face from my hands and see, surprised, that the old man now sits beside me on the ground. He looks at me gravely.

“We are all mad,” I whisper, choking on tears.

The old man sits quietly for a long moment, as if thinking deeply or listening to something far in the distance. When he speaks again, his voice is unexpectedly gentle, with a hint of what sounds almost like cheer—a tone that I should find insulting but that somehow comforts me.

“Mad or not, I think I know your friend’s ‘phantom,’” he says. “Indeed, if I am not mistaken, I knew her well for many long years.”

I am too startled to do more than stare in shock. My first thought is to deny this old man—surely he is either mad himself, or he seeks to mock the mad, broken thralls of Mordor. Yet in his eyes, even more than in the eyes of the healer who sought out his companion to help my friend, there is something that compels me to believe him, to trust him even against my saner thoughts.

“She ... she lives in truth?” I ask, fearing both my question and his answer.

The old man looks at me, eyes glinting in a long, penetrating stare. I want to shrink away, but I am frozen. Then, suddenly, he chuckles softly and pats my knee with a gnarled but still-strong hand.

“She lives indeed,” he says. “I know her, as I said. Long ago I served in her Halls, far in the distant West. She taught me much, this Lady.”

“Who is she?” I whisper.

A strange frisson runs through me, a shiver of anticipation that is neither desire nor dread, but something more mysterious and elemental.

“She has many names,” the old man says slowly, seeming deep in thought or memory. “Your friend hit near the mark when he called her Lady of the Tears, for such is the meaning of her name in many tongues. Grief for the pains of the world dwells ever in her heart, and her eyes overflow with much weeping. Sorrowful she is, but wise, and her speech is wisdom in sorrow, and courage to endure. Pity she has for those who suffer, and pity she teaches to those who heed her. Great she is among the Powers who are reverenced by the wise in these lands.”

My heart sinks again, lower than before.

“Then my friend is doomed,” I say, and let my eyes fall closed. I am suddenly exhausted. “If it is your Lady who comes to him, it cannot be for his sake. I have heard of the patrons of the stone lands and their hatred of the peoples of the south.”

The old man frowns.

“Who has told you this?” he asks.

“No one. Everyone. It is known.”

We have all heard the stories of the cruel men of the north, pale and cold. How they worship vengeful gods of the sea and summon the aid of warrior mages who feed on starlight and never die. Many nights we have listened to our commanders tell us of the wrath of the powers that lurk to the north and west, how they destroyed even those of their own people who dared to turn toward our southern ways.

The old man fixes me with another penetrating stare, as if he would peer into the most fearful corners of my mind. In the next moment, though, his expression clears into a look that is grave, but not unkind.

“You have lived long under a dark shadow, my friend, and many lies have been told to you. But a new day has come, and you may walk now in the light, if you will it. First, though, you must learn to unlearn much of what you have been taught. There may come a time—”

Suddenly the old man falls quiet and looks toward the tent. I realize abruptly that Jokut’s cries have stopped, replaced by low, urgent voices speaking words I do not know. I panic and stumble to my feet, but the old man grabs my hand.

“Wait!” he commands. “Your friend is not lost. Even now, I deem, the Lady is holding him in her arms.”

I shiver at his words. I do not know what to think, but I can do nothing, so I sink back down beside the old man. Almost against my will, I realize, I find his presence comforting. For all that our conversation has confused and frightened me, something in his words has kindled something within me, a small spark long alien to my spirit.

“Have hope,” the old man says. He squeezes my shoulder, leans on me slightly as he rises. “Now, I have many other errands this night. I bid you rest—and hope!”

With that, he disappears into the darkness.

Minutes, I cannot guess how many, pass in silence. My eyes droop closed, and I fall into a strange, timeless fog. Memory, or something more than memory, rises unbidden before my eyes: endless marches, raids, our columns ever growing, year after year. Endless faces, dead, dying, or dragged into the long death of the endless marches. Endless plains of ash and slag, stretching out toward the northern lands of terror, toward black gates and pale warriors with cruel magic. Endless grey smoke rising, forming heavy clouds, forming choking hazes ... forming, gradually, the shape of soft grey robes, a hooded cloak over a woman’s form ... and out of the smoke, eyes like stars piercing the darkness, smiling gently though flowing tears ...

I am startled from this hazy, half-dreaming state by a light hand falling on my shoulder.

“Peace,” a voice whispers—I turn, and see it is the first healer I met before, tall and fair and impossibly graceful. I hold my breath as he studies me with his starlit eyes, and it strikes me, suddenly, that his eyes are far too old to belong to one who looks so young.

“Friend of you ... sleeps he,” the healer says in his strange, halting way. “Sleeps, heals. Slowly, slowly heals ... but lives.”

I jump to my feet but sway precariously. The healer reaches out to steady me, and I find myself clinging to his arm.

“Thank you,” I say fervently. It is not enough, but I have no other words. “Thank you, and the other also. Thank you.”

The healer’s solemn nod is softened by a smile. I stumble after him as he returns to the tent where my young friend now lies quiet.

“Come new day ... that time, after dawn, return I ... friend of you see I,” he tells me. “Sleep you now.”

He holds the tent flap open and a fragrance I cannot identify drifts out to meet me, sweet and fresh—the scent of a world washed clean of dust and ash and torment.

“Sleep you now,” the healer urges, and I find I am too exhausted to protest. I stagger forward and stoop to enter, but sudden uncertainty makes me hesitate. I look back, and the healer meets my gaze with quiet, understanding eyes.

“Peace now,” he murmurs. “To friend go you. Sleep. Peace now.”

Weariness is closing in on me ever more rapidly. I kneel beside my young friend and listen for his breathing. Hearing it come soft and even, I fall onto the pallet next to him. My eyes close, and I sleep at last.

I dream of sinuous winds sweeping across vast plains under numberless stars … of green shoots springing up from desert sands ... of a Lady watching with tears and hope mingling in her eyes.