The Hour of the Seraphs

“Tilar,” whispered Miriel. “So it was you, was it? You sent the poisoned pomegranate in one of your oh-so-generous fruit baskets? You hid your murderous intent under oranges and lemons? Did you also set fire to the library? Did you try to kidnap the young Seraph?”

Tilar sneered. “You didn’t think I’d be content just to be a guild leader all my life?”

“I should have known,” said Majani. “Hamûjil warned me about you, way back when you were first elected. He said you were dangerous because you were, what was it, ambitious and frivolous? And he told me that you tried to get the Council to abandon the New Way. But I couldn’t have imagined any Kûzin would stoop as low as this.”

“Shut up and get out the way, Majani,” said Tilar. “That is my seat now.”

Majani’s expression was hard to read – was it sadness? Bemusement? Disdain?

“You cannot possibly expect me to give up my throne to you. What a ridiculous notion. Go away or I will call the guards.”

“What is ridiculous,” said the ambassador, “is your naivety. Do you think we have come here without leverage? My soldiers have already killed your guards and taken over the palace. The Krâ are an hour’s march from your borders. And my finest warriors are just now entering your nursery. I need but send the word and they will kill your precious children.”

Majani blanched. She stood up, stepped down from the dais and walked across the room to stand with her ladies beside a basketwork cabinet that displayed some of her smaller bird figurines. Only Miriel remained beside the blue baldachin.

Tilar threw her head back and ascended the dais. With a flick and swirl of her robes, she turned and sat down on Majani’s throne. The ambassador took up position behind her.

“Behold your new Archseraphine,” he said. “She will rule over Kûz in Sauron’s name and I will be her advisor.”

Olan stepped forward.

“Ah, Olan,” said Tilar with a sickening smile. “It is good of you to be the first to pay your respects to me.”

“You are wrong, Tilar,” said Olan. “I have no respect to give you. I do not hate the New Way, and I most certainly do not hate the Archseraph. You were the one who told the council to make an alliance with Sauron, not me.  I am an old man and I have old-fashioned tastes, but I know right from wrong. If you had cared to pay attention to anyone other than yourself, you would know that while I said at the Council that the New Way has made us vulnerable, I did not vote to abandon it. We all saw the Unquenchable Light that day. I thought we all were deeply moved by it, but it seems you were not. How can you not be ashamed to consort with this lowlife?”

Tilar looked taken aback for a moment, but recovered swiftly. “Very well,” she said. “I would have put you in a position of authority, but if you prefer to languish in the dungeons instead…”

“What dungeons? We don’t have any dungeons.”

“Dungeons will be provided,” barked the ambassador.

“I warn you, Tilar,” said Miriel. “Very soon you will find the wrath of the Power of Air come down on you.” She gave Olan a look and then glanced upwards. He followed her gaze. Majani made a sign with her left hand and Miriel nodded.

“Your threats are empty,” sneered Tilar. “Everyone knows that the Powers abide beyond the seas and do not interfere with the affairs of mortals.”

“The Powers might surprise you yet,” replied Miriel.

“Enough idle chatter,” said the ambassador. “Majani will now go to one of the balconies and tell the people outside that she is relinquishing her throne and –” 

Just then, footsteps were heard by the door and in walked Alamûjil, followed by Ninod with Řahamûjil on her arms and Lalina holding on to her skirts. There was a brief moment when everyone seemed baffled.

“Now!” cried Majani, and with a swift movement of her arm she tipped over the cabinet. Tilar and the ambassador started at the noise of smashing porcelain. But Miriel and Olan leapt up and grabbed the fabric of the baldachin and right enough, this was the day that the whole wretched thing came down, muffling the cries of rage from the conspirators trapped underneath.

-oOoOo-

Nobody sat down. The two groups stood opposite each other, some seven or eight feet apart within the ring of stone seats, not exactly hostile, but wary. Ezen Kemra was the tallest and the most splendid among the Krâ, clothed in a fur coat that would have made Jarin shudder had she not seen it before, and with a beard that would have done a dwarf proud tucked into a copper-studded belt. Beside Kemra’s bulk, Ezen Worig of Baktu looked almost small, whereas when Jarin had seen him before in Baktu he had seemed sturdy enough. She had never yet met the Ezen of Talak, Gomru, who was more than ten years younger than the other Ezens. All three wore their chains of office, a necklace of beaten silver discs. The other five, leaders of rural regions perhaps, or simply able men appointed to positions in this new army, were more workmanlike in their attire and less dignified in their posture. On the Kûzar side, Jarin stood between Diri and the Archseraph, with the rest of their party on Hamûjil’s other side.

“Hamûjil,” began Ezen Kemra, “you and your companions are guests in my tent. I would welcome you with food and drink, but it seems to me you feel very urgent about this message you bring, so we should hear that first.”

“Thank you, my friend.” There was a pause, which stretched out and settled, and Jarin suddenly feared that Hamûjil didn’t know what to say, that his eloquence and power of persuasion had deserted him at this crucial moment. But then he spoke.

“We hear you are going to Mordor to swell the armies of Sauron. You have turned your back on your homes and your families to take part in the wars of the West. But why? Why do you wish to fight in battles that have nothing to do with you; why would you risk your lives for someone who neither knows you nor cares about you?”

“You make assumptions, Archseraph,” said Ezen Gomru. “Your first assumption is that we owe you any kind of explanation for what we do. This displeases us. Your second assumption is, however, more serious, because it concerns Sauron. He doesn’t care about us, you say? And what would you know about it? Sauron has offered us respect and friendship. Sauron has paid us generously for our harvest, and Sauron has promised us great riches to reward our services. Do you not know that he is the Lord of Gifts?”

 “Gifts?” cried Warden Yun. “What did Sauron give you for all your grain? Swords and spears to use for his purposes.”

“And what would you have given us for it?” replied Ezen Gomru. “All your rougher crafts, for we cannot afford the finer ones, and you keep the secret of their making to yourselves! You soar through the air on the backs of dragons while we trudge in the dirt. You sit fat and contented on your silk cushions and drink coffee and cocoa from porcelain cups, and your splendour is doubled and tripled by your mirrors. Meanwhile, we scrape the gruel off our wooden plates with our wooden spoons!”

“You exaggerate,” said Hamûjil.

“Do I now? Do you remember the winter before last? When the fever struck and the Kûzeen had a powerful medicine, but the Krâ did not?”

There was a flurry of nodding heads among the Krâ.

“We gave you the medicine,” said Warden Yun.

“Yes,” said Ezen Kemra, “eventually, and for a price! Our people were dying and you thought of filling your coffers.”

But our medicine did cure your people, Hamûjil wanted to reply, yet he remained silent. The reasons had seemed convincing at the time: That all trade was good trade. That many Kûzeen had worked long and hard, first to study herbs and then to brew the medicine, and that they deserved to be paid for their labours. Only now did it occur to him that they should have been paid out of the Seraphs’ treasury; that he, the richest man in Middle-earth, should have purchased it for the Krâ just as he had for his own people.

We did not mean it. We thought we had our ways and you had yours. We saw you dressed in drab garments and live in plain houses and we thought of it as your culture with which we should not interfere. How easily we deceived ourselves! How we have failed! How I have failed…

All the Krâ were looking at him. He was taking too long to reply. He had rehearsed different scenarios in his head on the way, but this was not one of them. He had no answer. His errand would fail. His entirely plan to remind the Krâ of their better selves was based on the assumption that the Kûzeen knew how to be their best selves.

Beside him, he could feel Jarin stir. “Archseraph?” she whispered. And he remembered what she had said to him, months ago, when they were coming down from the Sacred Cave.

Then Hamûjil took a step forward and fell on his knees before the Ezens. A surprised murmur rippled through the tent.

“Honoured Ezens,” he said, “in the name of Kûz, I turn to you and to all the people of Krâ. Ezen Gomru is right. We have not been good neighbours to you. We have lived in comfort in our house of plenty and left you standing by the door. It suited us to think that you were content with the way things were. We have done wrong. On behalf of my people, I humbly ask your forgiveness, and I beg you to turn away from your current course. We shall turn away from ours and strive to be better neighbours. Better friends. Together, we can build a future for both our peoples, for the sunflower fields of Krâ and the orange groves of Kûz. Sauron can offer you nothing but loot and pillage. We offer you our knowledge and skills, so you can build your own wealth and flourish like we do. I beseech you to go home. Do not go to this war, to be killed or become killers, on account of our shortcomings. We did not mean to treat you shabbily, but we failed to really see. But do you see it now as I do? The Kûzeen and the Krâ belong together. I have always believed that, but only today do I truly understand what that means.”

“Liar!” cried a burly Krâ and lunged forward, axe in hand. Without any notion of what she might do next, Jarin threw herself at the man. There was a crunching sound as they collided, and the thrust of her leap was such that they both fell over, and then there was another, sickening noise, which was the sound of the man’s head hitting one of the boulders. Jarin had fallen on top of him, her face buried in his furry jerkin, so she saw nothing but heard the sudden flood of angry voices. This is the end, she thought. They’ll kill us all. She sensed movements all around her, and a hand grasped hers, and then she heard the thundering voice of Ezen Kemra utter a single word, and the word was, “Stop!” And such was the power of that voice that the other voices did indeed stop and silence spread. Jarin lifted her head and saw only Diri’s face right in front of her. But the face blurred and became obscured by dark patches, and she closed her eyes. Commotion of the brain, she thought. And then she knew nothing else for a while.

-oOoOo-

It was immensely convenient that so many silk scarfs were to hand and could easily be knotted together to form a rope. Without much ceremony, Miriel and Rimere sat down on the bundled-up villains while Majani and the others began to tie them up. Alamûjil, meanwhile, was prancing around the room crying, “Get them! Get them! Get them!” until Majani hushed him. “We’ve already got them, sweetheart.”

“And be careful,” added Ninod. “There are shards all over the floor. Oh, Seraphine, your beautiful birds!”

“Yes, it’s a shame,” said Majani wistfully. “But we needed a quick distraction. And I can always get new birds. I’m more concerned about all the guards who were killed, and about the evil soldiers in the palace.”

There were still furious exclamations emanating from the wriggling blue bundle, but thankfully due to the thickness of the fabric, they were easily ignored.

“Which guards were killed?” asked Ninod.

“Well, all of them, the ambassador said.”

“That can’t be. There were the usual two outside the nursery. And I didn’t see any evil soldiers, nor any dead bodies.”

“Good gracious, he bluffed!” cried Miriel. “So I guess it’s not true about the Krâ at the borders either.”

Running footsteps could be heard approaching in the corridor, and then two guards appeared at the door.

“Is everything alright, Seraphine? Mistress Tilar told us there was a fire, but when we went to the throne room it was all fine, and we checked all over the palace and couldn’t find any fire anywhere. What happened here?”

“Something that would have been less likely to happen if you hadn’t left your post,” said Miriel. “Mistress Tilar tried to usurp the throne.”

“We must arrest her!” cried the guard, excited that finally something dramatic was happening in his job. “Where is she gone?”

Majani pointed at the collapsed baldachin.  “There she is, snugly wrapped up with her partner-in-crime.  If it pleases you, take them away and lock them up somewhere.”

Miriel gave her an urgent look.

“On second thoughts,” said Majani, “we will come with you and we will lock them up. And then I’ll have a word with the captain of the guard.”

“Can I lock them up, Mother?” asked Alamûjil.

“Well, maybe you can help, but I need to be really sure that they cannot escape, so I will take the key myself.”

“Ow, Mother!”

“Hush now. Let’s go. Oh, and Ninod?”

”Yes?”

“That was a most appositely timed appearance.”

-oOoOo-

The first thing Jarin saw when she opened her eyes was a lot of hair. Tough, dark, wavy hair. She realised it was Diri’s beard. He was kneeling beside her, but was looking up and speaking in Krâin to another person. Both sounded calm and quiet. Jarin wondered why she had expected to hear angry shouts. Then she remembered what had happened. She tugged Diri’s sleeve.

“Will he live?”

Diri looked round and took her hand.

“Oh, good, you are awake. How are you feeling?”

“Will he live? The man I attacked, will he live?”

“Jarin, you didn’t attack him, you stopped him from attacking the Archseraph.”

“Answer me, please! Will he live?” Jarin struggled to sit up, but her head swam and she had to lie down again. She glanced around and saw that they were no longer in Ezen Kemra’s tent, but in a much smaller one, and there was nobody here beside Diri and the Krâ he had been talking to.

“Hush, Jarin! I don’t know. They took him away to another tent with another healer. Speaking of which, this is Dimral.”

The Krâ gave her a solemn nod.

“Diri tells me you had commotion of the brain not long ago,” he said. “Whether or not this is the reason you passed out, I am not sure, but in any case you should rest now. You are otherwise unhurt. Try to sleep if you can. I will come back in the morning.” He went out.

“You heard him,” said Diri. “Try to sleep.”

“How can I sleep? I need to know what happened to the man. And Hamûjil too, and our mission; what did the Ezens say? And where is Sâlian?”

“Ezen Gomru said sixteen people in that situation were a liability. It’s just the three Ezens talking now to Hamûjil, Alatar and Yun. They’ve been in there for a couple of hours. Sâlian was here with you until about half an hour ago, then she went to sleep. We divided the night between us, for watching you, I mean.”

“And the man?”

“Jarin, I really don’t know. Look, it’s not your fault. We all saw what happened, and the Ezens confirmed that they hold you blameless. But I understand why you feel upset. If you want, I can see if I can find out how he is.”

“Oh, please do!”

When Diri had left, Jarin closed her eyes and replayed the scene in her mind. The axe was what she recalled most clearly. It was big, it looked sharp, the firelight reflected on it. It could have cleaved Hamûjil’s head right in half or chopped it from his body. These possibilities had presented themselves to her with such instant certainty that her body had reacted before her brain had any chance to get involved. There was no space in her mind even now for a scenario where she would not have jumped.

Nevertheless, as she lay on the pile of furs that served for a bed in the tent (someone, presumably Diri or Sâlian, had thoughtfully draped a woollen cloak over the fur so at least she wouldn’t have to touch it), something else became instantly certain to her: The man hadn’t snatched up his axe; it had already been in his hand. Perhaps he had indeed intended to use it, perhaps not. There was no proof either way. Maybe he had just meant to shove the Archseraph. Maybe he would merely have berated him. Maybe her interference was unwarranted, unjustified and unforgivable.

And how would it impact on Hamûjil’s plight? When he had knelt down and spoken so passionately, she had felt the mood among the Krâ turn and she had quivered with hope that they would listen and agree. But now? What were they even still negotiating, the six of them? Were they even considering turning the host around, or was Hamûjil right now pleading for the life of his party?

“Jarin?”

She opened her eyes to find both Diri and Sâlian crouching beside her.

“Jarin,” said Sâlian, in a voice that melted with compassion. “Jarin, dearest…”

“The man is dead,” said Diri. “The healers think he cracked his skull on the rock. There was nothing they could do for him, and Jarin, everyone agrees and I cannot stress this enough, it is not your fault!”

“How can it not be!” cried Jarin. She pulled her hood over her eyes, curled up and turned away from her friends. The sobs were coming so fast and so hard that she could barely breathe in between.

What had she become?

Hamûjil had beseeched the Krâ to return to the ways of peace. He had asked them not to kill or become killers. He had humbled himself and cast off his claims to dignity. And then she, Jarin Dragonrider, a Kûzin committed to the New Way, a lungi who had seen the Unquenchable Light, had become a killer. What was left to her now?