“Bring him,” Khrashnak said, waving her thick, muscled arm in the seneschal’s direction. Her seneschal, Jyder, grabbed the human by the shoulders and shoved the emaciated man forward. This caused the man to stumble towards Khrashnak, to fall at her feet. She felt the man’s skin touch the tips of her boots.

Others will talk if they see.

Khrashnak kicked the man’s hand away, roughly.

“Please....” the man wailed.

The seneschal struck the man with his rod. Only the smallest noise escaped the man’s lips, he appeared both weak and used to the treatment, compliant. Khrashnak felt something unusual: pity. She could not allow herself to indulge the emotion, however. The man cowered, silent.

“You will answer my questions, worm.” Khrashnak said, slamming the heel of her boot into the stone of the floor. The echoing sound caused the man to cringe as it boomed through the antechamber. “Why do your people keep trying to invade our lands?”

“No know, no know!” the man gibbered, in fractured Urukhane.

More of this again.

She had already visited the man in the cells several times. He was held away from any uruk prisoners, guarded by uruk whom Khrashnak trusted. Still, that hardly mattered. Trust is far too tenuous, like truth. Uruk talked and would continue to talk. Since humans had been flushed from the Sunlands by the Tide, those who remained had been made into slaves or wives, captured outlander Men, like this poor creature, were an extremely rare breed. But still they came. With their wagons and horses. Their metals and crafts. Their strange foods. And their words, which sounded just familiar enough to Khrash’s ears when she heard them, as though she were remembering something, just dissonant enough to make her stomach twist. As though the language had a root in common with her own. And yet they always look upon us as though we are monsters. Like every other human captured this one was terrified of the Urukhainen, as those they were the nightmares and he the dreamer. Such prisoners usually died in captivity, most never learned more than the simplest words in the Urukhainen tongue, if they were allowed to keep a tongue at all.

They have forgotten us. They have forgotten themselves! I will not pity their failure. They should not have forgotten!

Of this, Khrashnak was now sure. She had read the histories, not just the ones Blue Skin’s pogroms had allowed to remain, but also the secret ones kept by those Urukhainen who had a passion for such things. A passion alike to Khrash’s own. She knew of the Great War. Of the Rings of Power and the Dark Lord, of his various lineages. Her personal favorite was The Lord of Gifts. Only a fool would trust such a name. This histories gave her an fuzzy idea whom Blue Skin truly was, aside from a mere wizard. She suspected this was why the wizard had made such delicate and thorough efforts at quashing the histories. Our new Lord of Gifts would change the past if he could. But the memory lives in our blood and our blood sings when we find it. It will always return. Until we are made whole again.

Khrashnak Ven did not intend to bow to Blue Skin forever. She had loftier goals. Khrashnak would not sell her people to a new Dark Lord for the promise of dominion. But she knew the Urukhainen would need his power if they were to cross the seas and establish the Empire in Middle Earth. Such a strange name for a continent. Middle of what? As though the orb of the planet could have a middle upon its surface? What dreaming nonsense. The sciencemongers had long since proven the shape of the world as a sphere, even the most ignorant peasant did not disavow that truth. And yet these Men have no knowledge of it. Blue Skin’s fingers touched even the knowledge of the shape of the world. His teachings would have us believe in some magical holy land. Khrash wanted to laugh at her own thoughts. Blue Skin’s fingers touch all knowledge. Likely the wizard knows of the secret histories. Likely he knows I had read them. Perhaps I have erred in allowing him to maintain himself among us.

Khrashnak did not fear much, but the idea of Blue Skin knowing so much, controlling so much chilled her. The wizard was no friend to the Urukhainen, no matter what he claimed. No matter what the majority of the Urukhainen believed, no matter how many of them had found solace in Blue Skin’s worship of the Selfless and it’s promise of nirvana in emptiness.

He will kill me if he can.

This thought made Khrash laugh bitterly, inside. She knew she did not have the power to withstand Blue Skin, despite all her hope-laden plans to use him and see him destroyed after. If the wizard wanted her dead now he could destroy her, she had seen the effects of his magics, it was fact. She knew she could not stand against them, yet. But she did not fear the magics, nor death, not like she feared the failure which would infest her final moments if Blue Skin did kill her.

Others have defeated the wizards and their kind. Once I find what I seek, even Blue Skin will not be able to defeat me. I must not fail my people. Our time comes.

But though the Urukhainen, by and large, revered Blue Skin, though the common folk saw him as a patron saint of sorts, Khrash knew they saw her as something different. She was the Captain, the greatest warrior of her people. Descendant of the Great King, though that was a secret she alone bore, since the rest of her family had perished in the uprising which brought her to the Captaincy. Once, she knew, all Priests had been members of her family, had known the secrets, but time had worked its peculiar magic until such truths existed in Khrashnak’s great-sires only. Somehow, against what Khrash knew were impossible odds, her family had managed to pass the traditions of their heritage down over four thousand years, so they still resided within her. She had had no siblings with which to share the burden of her mother’s grim bitterness of their plight. That Amanshak had been bitter was not in question, Khrash could remember the horrid old woman well, if for the beatings alone.

But for her the legend would have died. I would know nothing. I would be just another Uruka dreaming of conquest. I suppose I can thank her for that. If nothing else. By my victories were never hers.

No Khrash, no matter what is lost, you would never be just another Uruka, your blood sings far too loud for such silence.

If only there had been another way to win the uprisings, without Blue Skin...

The blood sings...

“Captain?” the Seneschal said, questioning.

She glanced at the uruk, withholding most emotion from the gaze. Part of being both Captain and Priest meant she must act as though such things did not touch her. The dance was not one she preferred. She had memories of being different once, but it was difficult enough to retain power without seeming to be weakened by emotion.

“I wish to personally speak to the prisoner. Alone.” Khrash said, soft, but firm.

The Seneschal pressed his hands together and backed away. Before he left the prison chambers he gestured to one of the guards to unlock the door. Khrash had not asked to be let into the cell, but Seneschal Ortho was trained in his role to spot more than his master ever said. A smaller, more brow-aspected uruk soldier, his height barely reaching Khrash’s chest, shuffled forward to unlock the cell door. This jailer would never be allowed to serve in the open forces, his aspect was too low, his size was too small, his brow too ridged, and his strength would not suffice against the larger warriors. Such nonsense. A strong warrior is as much a matter of the mind and heart as the body! However the jailer was corded with muscle, moved with a feline grace, which spoke of martial skill. It is a shame he is so wasted. Khrash would not spend a great deal of time watching the fellow, it could be noticed and draw attention neither of them would welcome.

Once inside the cell, Khrash waved the jailer away. The uruk scuttled off. The prisoner slid further against the wall, shying away from Khrash. Torture marked the man’s smooth skin in places. His genitals had been removed and the scar was clearly healing poorly in the filthy, damp environment of the cells. It was common practice to geld captured Men, though few among the Urukhainen had any idea why. Khrash was among the few. He cowered against the wall, covering his face with his arm. His pleadings began to reach her ears.

“No...no...” he muttered.

“I... not... hurt.” Khrash said, in a pidgin of old tongue. She was something of a scholar among her people, but by no means a linguist. The tongues of her heritage were many and she had little hope of understanding them all, even if such were allowed. What had once been known as Westron however, was vaguely related to the language spoken by the Urukhainen, with many words in common, though the captured Men often spoke with horrid, drawling accents. Many had their tongues removed, as Urukhainen would quickly tire of listening to jabber which sounded as though it should make sense, but did not. Some Priests could understand many of the languages of the world, they were taught such, but it was considered out of fashion at present to make it known such knowledge was retained. Khrash and Blue Skin both had had a hand in that.

The populace is being moved to war, understanding of any kind is not productive for the machine.

“You worry, child.” a melodious voice murmured.

Khrash, hardened and trained, still found herself startled. Even as she tried to suppress the startle she realized it was pointless. He knows.

“Lord.” Khrash said, bowing her head with more than the appropriate amount of reverence. It was not much of an effort to do so. Despite having true feelings of doubt and dislike for Blue Skin, she had been raised to revere the Man, if Man he truly was. The power of his cult pushed the uprisings. I rule on his grace. She also knew his goals were not as he claimed. His desires for the Urukhainen, for the entire Bloodshine Empire , for the world, were other than what he told the people and his cult. Still, Khrash did not have enough evidence to dislodge him, nor the power to bring such to bear if she did have it.

He takes us to war. It must be for a good reason. I must make it so.

“I sense your doubt, Captain.”

Khrash could not keep the shock off her face. She would not have tried, even if she had some hope she could deceive. It was not her way. And Blue Skin had his magics, he could sense much of what she wished to hide.

But not all.

Blue Skin moved into the chamber and stood before her. He was a very tall Man, lithe and limber, by the standards of the Urukhainen, his aspect lacking any trace of uruk. He was different than any Urukhainen, his features were… odd. Aside from the heavily tattooed skin which made his bodily entirely blue. Khrash had seen more Men than most Urukhainen, and they also were nothing like Blue Skin, some had skin of pale color, others dark, but to a man they were all small, fragile things. He taller than any Man we have ever captured. Blue Skin seemed carved from a stone. He must be made of the same stuff as the Urukhainen. Somehow.

The prisoner shuffled away from Blue Skin, the expression on the Man’s face making it clear this was not the first time they had met. There was some glimmer of hope in the man’s huddled posture, though. Without looking up at Blue Skin the prisoner began babbling.

“You help...sir? Good sir! Please!” the Man babbled in Urukhainen, before switching to the awful Man-jabber. “Save me from these monsters! Whatever they’ve done to you, I can promise you safety if you can buy my freedom! I know you have the power, sir! I know it! I have great friends among the Mother Church!”

Blue Skin glanced, emotionless, at the prisoner. He made the slightest, almost unheard noise of impatience. His hand moved in the slightest of gestures, tipping his water-staff at the prisoner. The stone atop the staff was unlike any Khrash had ever seen. Perhaps it is unique. Somehow it contained liquid, lockrf inside the clear stone, liquid which moved within the stone, as though Blue Skin had managed to capture part of the very Sea. Hold it captive to his will. Power, unseen but not unfelt, lanced off the stone towards the prisoner. The Man was slammed against the slick rock of the wall by an invisible force, a grunt of painful misery escaped his lips as he slumped to the floor, whimpering. Blue Skin moved closer to Khrash, too close for comfort, closer than any Urukhainen, save a close tribal or lover would ever attempt. It mattered not that it was akin to a deep personal affront to do so, she knew Blue Skin cared not. It was one of the things other Urukhainen seemed almost to admire about the wizard. The Man tried to speak but something had stilled his voice, and nothing came from his moving mouth. Blue Skin made to leave.

“Come with me, Captain. I think it is time I show you something.” Blue Skin whispered in Khrash’s ear. “Leave the Man to his desserts. I have searched his mind and can promise you, we could hardly give him enough pain to balance that which he has given to others.” The Man’s face was screwed up in torturous pain now, his eyes wide with demons only he could feel.

The Man managed to reach a feeble hand out towards them, but pain took him. They are weak, these Men. How is it they manage in the Wild? Do they know nothing of the Selfless?

“Lead on, Lord.” Khrash said, inclining her head towards Blue Skin. He smiled the smallest, most conspiratorial smile, as if he and Khrash had shared together some pernicious and wholly offensive joke. It was always this way with Blue Skin, though Khrash could never quite make herself certain it was not just her.

Blue Skin led her away from the prison cells, up through the lower halls, and back into the upper Zig. Every Urukhainen they passed gave the proper obeisance, doubly so because it was both the Captain and the Wizard. Together they were sword and shield to the Urukhainen, two pieces of the triad of the hope of the people. Among those who lived in the Zig, the Priests and those who serviced them, this belief was even more fervent. It was true religion. Here it was faith.

They will follow him before me.

They traveled to the top of the Zig, to the quarters where Blue Skin alone controlled the rooms. None came here without his permission nor presence, not the servants, not Khrash. It was Sanctum. Khrash had only been within Sanctum twice, once as a small uruka, and once shortly after she was named Captain. It had not changed, as though time not only did not affect Blue Skin – the Man did not age – but as though he did not actually live in the place. Everything, and Khrash was trained to notice details everywhere, was exactly the same, in exactly the same place as it had been the first time she entered the place. More, it felt different inside the Sanctum, as though the air were staler than any place Khrash had ever been, and the space owned a quiet so still it was disturbing. Eerie for one used to the tumult of the Urukhainen tribes.

“Sit.” Blue Skin said, indicating a small chair near a table situated before a wall of book-laden shelving. Blue Skin did not pause to see if he was obeyed, he kept moving towards the far corner where a cloth covered pedestal sat in shadow. Even the cloth appears as though it has not moved in decades. Without a flourish Blue Skin ripped away the velvety fabric to reveal a stone, as large as a child’s head, shining as though with the light of captured stars reflected upon dark lake water. The exact same blue shade as the stone upon Blue Skin’s staff.

When Blue Skin spoke again Khrash nearly rose off the chair she was seated upon, so lost had she become in the depths of the stone. It called to her like nothing before ever had. She fought the urge to reach for it. As though it were hers and always had been meant for her hands alone. She felt instantly, and deeply, connected to it. With an almost irrepressible desire to hold it, handle it, covet it. See how deeply she could stare into it. Only her training kept her in the chair, kept her from rushing over to hover over it, to stroke it and stare within its depths. Blue Skin noticed.

“It is a precious thing, Captain.” he said, irritatingly calm. His right hand was just above the thing, the blue of his skin a lighter, vanishingly different color than the deeper midnight of the stone. “Would you believe...” Blue Skin began, staring at the stone, for all the Lands as if Khrash were of no consequence. Forgotten and unimportant. “That once, when Darkness threatened, as it is often wont to do, that once pity saved this world from that very same Darkness? That pity was the one thing the Darkness could not fathom, and therefore could not bring into the fullness of its schemes and plans? Evil so profound it nearly found a way to cover the entire world with its Darkness, of all things, Captain, it was pity which dismayed and discomfited it.”

Khrash heard the words, but it made little sense to her. How could pity have stilled one of the Dark Lords? For surely he speaks of the Lord of Gifts? Even if pity had conquered the Dark Lord, Khrash did not know how to respond. Pity is a fool’s errand. It is unending and unforgiving, full of tentacles fo endless want. The stone called her, making it difficult to focus. Blue Skin continued, still looking deep into the stone.

“Wrapped up in the store of the defeat of that particular Darkness is the tale of the Urukhainen. Of your people and of your line, Khrash. But first, I would ask you: did you feel pity for the Man in the cells?”

My line? What does he know of my lineage? Pity for a Man?It was such an odd question Khrash could not help but examine it wholly. Pity? For a Man? What foolery is this? They are beasts who speak tongues but to lie and trade goods only to steal. They forgot us, label us monsters! I will have pity for them. Despite this belief Khrash felt innately this was not the answer Blue Skin wanted from her, that he expected more from her than the standard line of thought carried by most of the Urukhainen. And what does he know of my lineage? A terrible chill wracked her spine at the thought of how many of her most closely guarded secrets the wizard actually knew.

So she allowed herself to imagine the Man below. What was his life before he was a prisoner? Did he have a family? Children? Surely even beasts such as he have dreams and hopes, thoughts for a future not full of meaningless trade and long journeys, of theft and graft, of any of the other foul things his kind attempted in every transaction they had with the Urukhainen and the Bloodshine Empire. Even though they forgot us, they surely have not forgotten civilization.

As if he sensed her thoughts Blue Skin spoke directly to them. “They are not so different from the Urukhainen, Khrash. These Men. A weaker breed to be sure than the Men of old. His kind were never so puissant as yours, given as they were to worship of the dark, of delight in the things which are closer to the dirt than the sky or oceans, or beyond. They deny the Selfless.”

Khrash was enthralled. She had always loved history, especially of the oldest variety, the tales of the beginnings, of how the Urukhainen came to the Bloodshine and made it their own. Of how they brought with them the Peace and the Way, which Blue Skin had forged into the Selfless. Blue Skin’s words hit her in the same spot, though it was not enough to dispel the lingering confusion she felt at his foray into the subject of pity. Pity is for the weak. This is one of the lessons the Priests teach all the children as soon as they begin to learn about the Way, to prepare them for the Selfless. This is Blue Skin’s own teachings, why would he imply pity belongs in any other place?

Again, as if he could read her very thoughts, Blue Skin seemed to speak directly to them. “The Selfless is not so simple, Captain. Even though the Urukhainen are the most gifted of all the races of this Earth, even they are not monolithic. They, like the other of the Children, often see no deeper than they wish. It is a fault your kind share with Men, with Dwarves and Halflings, and with Ents.”

Khrash did a double-take at Blue Skin’s words. Dwarves? Halflings? Ents? What in Issada’s name were those words to mean?

Confusion must have shown on her face so strongly it wafted off her body like a scent. Blue Skin looked up from the stone to focus on her. His blue-green pond eyes fixated on Khrash with a intensity which spoke of storms viewed as from beneath still water. There was an impression graven in those eyes, but if Khrash focused upon it she found herself staring at only the wavering image of herself reflected in scummy water.

“These things are part of what I would discuss with you.” Blue Skin said. He moved away from the stone the softest little sigh escaping his lips, as though it were a lover whose touch he was already missing. The wizard covered the stone with the velvet cloth, somehow managing to place it exactly as it had been before. Khrash wanted to giggle at the thought of Blue Skin with a lover – the wizard was above and beyond such things, wasn’t he? Khrash herself had been involved with the same woman for most of her life, but she kept Junda away from the Zig, from politics and power, and unfortunately it meant she herself rarely saw the radiant uruka. Blue Skin continued. “You already know the legends of your family. Perhaps you thought I did not? Of Issada the Mighty, who battled the Lord of Gifts, who conquered the Treemen, and who once wore the Ring of Might. The Man from whom your line is descended. The Man whose blood gives you claim to the Rule of the Earth.”

Khrash did not need to indicate that she did indeed know these tales. Her surprise that Blue Skin knew them was both authentic and trembling. Those tales had been as food to her when she was young, those tales of mighty deeds and days before the Urukhainen came to Bloodshine. Her Mother had been as obsessed with Issada as Khrash herself, only she had never been able to see Issada for what he was: a myth long dead. Mother had believe we were the children of this God-Man, and it had eaten away at her soul and sanity. Whatever Issada had been, he was no longer. Like Men, like their works and their memories, if he ever was, he is now dust! Khrash’s mother had taught her, not meaning to do so, that to hold fast to those dreams was foolery. Some childish part of Khrash herself did long for those dreams to return, to be made real, to be true in more than tales. My Rule of the Earth will be the end result of a long, protracted effort, not the result of dreams long-planned. Nor the blood of my past. Her father had been this sort, to plod forward all the days of his long life from exercise to exercise doing exactly as his father before him had done, until the Urukhainen spanned the breadth of the Sunlands, until there was Peace and the Way in every corner of the Lands. If only he had lived to see the Empire born. If only he had known himself to be more than just a warrior and Priest. We could have sailed to conquer this Middle Earth already.

Blue Skin continued. “There is far more to the story, Khrash.” Blue Skin moved to seat himself, gathered his washed-out grey-green robes tightly about himself as though chilled. “Long have the Priests whispered about the Time Before. Today I will reveal to you the truth of these matters, what I have, up to now, kept from the Urukhainen and Priests alike, because they were not ready. Are you ready, Captain?”

Khrash was not given the opportunity to respond before Blue Skin plowed forward. “It began long before even the Urukhainen’s ancestors walked beneath the stars, before even the Sun and Moon, the Burnt Face and Etched Face, danced apart in the night above. First there was the One, Melkor the Mighty and staring into the Void he saw the Selfless, and loving it, wished to fill himself with it...”

Khrash listened, for what seemed hours. She felt a piece of wrung out canvas by the end. Could these things be the truth? Are we really a lost, forlorn branch of the Children of Melkor? Riven from our heritage, our birthright of salvation in the Far West? Did our cousins steal the Darklights for themselves and flee with Salvation, closing the Orb of the World behind them so we could not follow? It seemed too fantastic, a fairy tale of such proportion it could neither be credited nor wholly believed. Yet...

Khrash believed it. She had dreamed of that Far West, of the Woman of Mad Grief, and her schemes to bring the Urukhainen there to the West, to Salvation. To the Immortal Life wrested from them by their cousins, the Elves.

They had the nerve to name themselves Eldar, as if coming before the other Children of Melkor made them holy! They blasphemed His gifts – they cast spells upon the very trees to make them other than Melkor intended, creating Trolls. They experimented upon their own, turning them into beasts, degrading the gift of Life within them until it was as that of Men, but without Melkor’s Gift, the passing from the world into the Peace and Way of the Void, into the Selfless. They are wretched, and evil, and yet despite this they were unable to destroy us! We became mighty! We warred upon them and drove them from the Middle Earth! But they taught the spells of Might and Metal to Men and we were undone by this. Undone by Halfling Men who stole the Ring of Might, and destroyed it, all at the behest of the Eldar! My ancestors were part of that line of Men, these Elessarans, these Gondorians, these Numenoreans, these Men of the West, the people of Issada and Ellada. Their vaunted blood flows within me, as does that of the Eldar, despite the evil attempts at sending us into the Light of Death, the Eternal Fire, the Unyielding Flame, Anor. No! To Udun I will call. I will bring Her Shadow and Fire upon them in the name of the Lost God. I will return Melkor to the World.

I will spread the Bloodshine across Middle Earth.

And then we will go West into the Undying Lands and take back that which was stolen from us.

Immortal Life.

These thoughts tumbled through Khrash’s mind as Blue Skin wove the story of the past about her, telling far more of her own story than she had ever dreamed could be possible. His voice wove a spell about her, and she could harbor no doubts, though she did not detect the weaving. Only the Peace and the Way kept her calm, the Selfless kept her from descending to a slathering rage in which she would tear the chamber apart and every book within it.

Blue Skin noticed.

“You burn with the fire of the Selfless, Captain. Good. It will sustain you long after other fires have been banked and washed away. Cleave to it!” His words held a magic, and Khrash wondered at it.

Does he cast a spell upon me?

Many times she had heard tell of the wizard’s spells, but in her entire life she had never seen him use or craft one. Have I finally seen his magic?

Blue Skin’s eyes flashed, like a curtain of rain before the moon, flashing in droplets until the wind blew it on and the night shined around in the drying pass of the storm. He smiled at her, his teeth shadowed, so they seemed covered in a fine moss of silvery, fibrous grey.

“Is this a spell?” Khrash asked, the Selfless giving her an intuition.

“Yes.” Blue Skin said. “...and no.”

He did not bother to explain the cryptic nature of his words. Instead he rose, a flash of pain across his features as though he were weary suddenly. Khrash had never before seen him so, had never imagined such a thing as a weary wizard. The man never seem to grow tired.

“Come.” Blue Skin beckoned. He moved towards the Stone. “I did not tell you these stories to cast a spell upon you, but to open you to Truth. I do not expect you believe me. You will see for yourself the truth of my words. Here. Stare into the Stone. It is a palantir. It cannot lie! Think of what you would see, let your mind expand and it will show you these things have happened. It will show you the truth long denied the Urukhainen. And it will show you the the Lost God. It will lead you to Him and with his mistress, Shadowfire, with Udun, you will lead the Urukhainen across the Seas and purify these Middle Earths in His holy name!”

Khrash leaned into the Stone, gazed hard into its depths. She felt as though she were falling head first into unending dark water. It was not long before the Way deserted her and she began screaming.

Next Chapter: Chapter 13 - Anrik