The ship swayed gently with the swells. A harsh, cold wind buffeted the craft, gusts lifting under the heavy furs of Masaan’s clothes to nip at his skin. He pulled his cloak tighter around him, unwilling to go inside, where it was mildly warmer, and miss what might be the last chance he would ever have to see his homeland. A roughness to the waves below tossed the craft, as though a compliment to the rushing cold of the wind. Behind him the deck creaked.

“It is a wondrous thing, no?” the uruka said, her voice frosted like the wind. Masaan did not turn to face her as he replied.

“It is.”

“We may never see it again.” she said.

“We may not.” Masaan said, neglecting to tell her he had been thinking the same thing.

“It has always been there, waiting, for me to return.” she said, her tone not at all soothing. They both knew this time was different. He said nothing. “You have never left the Masterlands, correct?”

She knew the answer, obviously, but Masaan would not rise to her bait. “Never.” he said.

“You have never seen the lands of the Lesser beings.” It was not a question.

“I have not.”

“Have you ever seen a Man? A Dwarf?” she said. Masaan turned to face her. Her thick lips were part in the early stage of a smile. She was laughing inside, he knew it. “An elf?”

Masaan went rigid at the word. It was gone from the tongues of most of the urukshane of the Masterlands. He now knew others existed, far away on another continent, divorced as a people from his own, but of the same stock. Javalyn had claimed they were close enough kin he would never suspect they were not urukshane, until he heard them speak.

“Their words have the taste of Man on the tongue. Perhaps this is why, long ago, our people chose to cast them aside.”

It had been a revelation far beyond any Masaan had expected, to learn of a second empire of the urukshane, full of might and power, and beyond the reach of the Masterlands. According to Javalyn they called themselves the “Urukhainen.” Which, Masaan had to agree did have the taste of Man on the tongue, though he could not precisely say how he knew this. But he did. Perhaps it was a memory of long ago lessons about the early days after the urukshane left the Middle Earta to find their rightful and proper home in the Masterlands. He could not say.

“You know quite well that I have not.” Masaan said. The ship rocked and Masaan had to clutch at the railing. Thankfully he did not retch. He was not used to ships of this size, but Javalyn was: she had not retched as Masaan heard, nor did she ever seem to need anything to keep her balance. “Sea-legs” some of the sailors called it.

How did the the Truth spread to these people? Had Ah’shakan known of them? His teacher had never once spoken of such things. It had been incredible for Masaan to learn the Truth was as widely spread as it was. Of course it was not common, not by any means, if Javalyn could be trusted, but that she herself had a ship full of uruks and urukas who knew Truth, who could read the Fire Book, and had seen Middle Earta, spoke a great deal to Masaan.

Perhaps Ah’shakan had her reasons for keeping these things from me.

Javalyn claimed she knew nothing of Ah’shakan, though she did say the Flame of Truth had long suspected someone in the Blue Hold knew Truth. How it was possible they could have known that, and yet not known of Ah’shakan was a riddle Masaan had not yet solved, despite almost three months in the uruka’s company.

“I will take you to Karm, Masaan. You will watch Faces rise and set one day in lands full of Lesser beings.”

Karm.

The ancient lands where, according to lore, the urukshane had defeated their cousins the Elves. The place where the urukshane had left those Elves who remained to suffer in torment, as punishment for their evil, for their unjust war against the urukshane. Masaan had firmly believed he knew Truth. Until he met Javalyn and her crew.

“I think perhaps when you learn the real Truth you will hate me for being the uruka who brought you to it.” Javalyn had said the first night he met her.

“How long will it take for us to reach the landing harbor?” Masaan asked, turning away from his homeland. Javalyn pursed her lips.

“With good winds, less than a week.”

Masaan nodded.

“You would ask me other things. I can see the questions in your eyes.”

Masaan bit his own lip. Javalyn always seemed far better at reading him than he was at reading her. How is it possible the world is so wide? With so many things I do not know, nor understand? His training as a Peace Days meant Masaan could be lit on fire and achieve a trance strong enough to die in the flame without feeling the pain. He could fight five uruks at once and disarm them all without wounding them or himself. He could leap his own height. Yet he had never understood urukas, not really. Javalyn especially. That she could, as she claimed, have come from the slums of Elharm, an urchin cast off by her parents shortly after her birth seemed almost too visceral for Masaan to accept. But nothing about Javalyn had yet given Masaan actual reason to believe she was lying about anything. Nothing beyond the sheer wildness of what she had revealed to him.

“You were sent to us, Masaan, because you sought Truth. Are you prepared to learn it? Good. The urukshane are not the Master race. We never were. We are a corruption. A cancer. Long ago a power of Darkness took us and broke us, then reforged the pieces back together into the... things... we became. But I suspect part of you already knew something of this Truth.”

He had.

“And we did not win the Great War. Nor any war. Our history is one of defeats broken by fruitless victories. Our last defeat sent our people, rudderless and abandoned, fleeing against their very extinction for the ice-crusted lands no other people wanted, or could survive. We did not discover the Masterlands as reward for our faith and power, we fled to them at the points of spears and axes, our lives worth less than the meanest beast.”

Masaan had not known any of that.

“And what you know as the Fire Book... even it is not Truth. Some bits of it are true, but perhaps long ago those who sought Truth did not think the urukshane could handle the depth of real Truth. We were not ready then, I suspect. It would have broken what little of us were left. Instead they chose to align the Fire Book with the ideas our people took on in order to survive – that our banishment was in fact a blessing, and that we were not creatures of evil, but the victors of goodness and hope.”

Masaan shuddered remembering the way his vision had blurred when Javalyn revealed these things to him. He had felt not just ignorant, but destructively so. It had almost been enough to draw a rage from within him Masaan had believed long dead and gone.

“The true Fire Book was written by Men, small versions of them, called Hobbits. It is a true account of the War of the Ring, of the downfall of the Dark Lord Sauron, servant of the Great Evil Morgoth. It is not even called the Fire Book but the Red Book of Westmarch. Which is a place we do not believe still exists, in a dead land called Shire.”

“But what of Elbereth?” Masaan had asked, clinging to the name against his rising fear and rage.

“Oh she is real, but long departed, with the last of the Elves she left went beyond the World, to a place we cannot reach in our ships.”

Elbereth gone. All his prayers had been to a dead goddess. Masaan had not yet recovered from this. He had felt her presence when he invoked her name. Had it all been a lie he very artfully believed until he had fooled even himself? Could it be possible to lie so coldly to oneself?

A question burning inside Masaan made its way past the memories of that awful, eye-opening conversation with Javalyn. “What of Men? Do they know of urukshane?”

Javalyn made a slight popping noise with her tongue, as if she were mildly vexed. Masaan wondered for a brief moment if she would choose not to answer him. But his fear was for naught. “Some few do. Once they were mariners of might. No longer. They have some wonders far beyond even the mightiest crafts of Elharm and the urukshane – but of sailing in ships they have nothing. Some fear grips them upon the wide waters and they will not build craft which can go beyond sight of their shores. Their minds are of metal and it sinks in the wide waters. To most Men we urukshane are part of a past of which they think a lie. A fairy tale, they call it. We are monsters they use in children’s tales to scare their little ones before sleep – because we are not real and therefore not to be truly feared. The few I have met simply thought me a deformed female Man.”

Masaan would have fallen over had he not been clutching at the railing.

Deformed? She is functional and ravishing. The curve of her brow, the squareness of her shoulders and the firmness of her voice, how can this be true? Can it be they drove us out of the wider world only to forget us?

“You bear the shock better than most. I have seen uruks throw themselves from the bow in despair after learning these truths. Our belief in our own mightful Destiny is deep within our bones and it does not remove easily.”

Masaan breathed deep, salty breaths of air. He just did not really know what to say. What to feel or think. And there was no Elbereth now to steady him. He was adrift. For a time he wavered in an empty place, the rocking motion of the huge ship entrancing him. A heavy, coarse hand gripping his shoulder returned him to the moment. Masaan sucked in the deepest salt-air breath yet, it felt like being newly born. He cried out.

“ELBERETH! A GILTHONIEL!”

Somewhere, below decks of the ship, other uruks began to sing, in a clipped staccato, with a lively tune. Masaan knew the tune, but the words were a blasphemy and he shuddered, for it was the first time he had heard them sung since left Elharm.

One ring to rule them all...

“No.” Masaan growled, not loud enough to overpower the singing, that was beyond him, but loud enough that Javalyn heard, that she would understand his meaning.

“Good.” Javalyn said. “An urukshane must hold to that which sustains, even when all seems darkest. Otherwise, what is the point? Have faith, friend. Have faith, Masaan. Elbereth is gone, but she is not dead. Perhaps together we can play a part in her return.”

Masaan could not remember the last time he had cried in public. The prohibition against such in the world of urukshane was as deep as that against bedding ones own mother. Still he could not control himself. I am not urukshane any longer. I am something new. The old laws will fall with the lies.

“Good!” Javalyn said. “Cry, friend. For the right to be sad was taken from us by the Dark Lord, among his many crimes. And we shall have it back.”

“What next?” Masaan asked, after a few uninterrupted minutes of tears, as he wiped his eyes. He half expected, even now, to see derision in the eyes of the sailors, but he saw only forbearance. Understanding. Determination. Peace.

They are true Peace Days. I can learn much from them.

“We go to the walled city of Stonetrade.” Javalyn said. “It is the southern most of the great cities of Men, and there our people are allowed to make port in a small post just out of sight of the town.”

“How is it the Men see our ships and do not fear us?”

This brought open laughter from the crew and Javalyn. “See our ships, gooduruk? Our ships are protected by the Shorelord. His green waves do more than guide our rudders. They shield us from the eyes of Men. If not for the Shorelord we would never have learned the craft of shipbuilding, not survived once we did. His name is mighty upon our tongues, as mighty as that of the Starlady. If you call to Him, he will answer, as long as your heart is wet.”

Masaan nodded. He understood spell work of this kind. He had a question. “How is it Men have not learned the breaking of such spells?” He himself could do it, with enough effort and knowledge, time spent studying the spell and concentration. Most urukshane were trained from a young age to defeat the spelled webs of Angola’s Children. If they were not able then they did not survive.

“When the Eldar fled the Middle Earta, such things began to … fade. It no longer became possible for Men to use magic, as they once had. What they think of as magic now is... strange. They have powers of wheels and machines, they can make bolts of lightning appear in empty air, and they can move metal with enough force to shatter an urukshane’s foreskull.”

This last stumped Masaan. He could swing his stoned staff with enough force to shatter the hardest ice, but he had never seen anything sharp and powerful enough to pierce the foreskull of a fully-grown urukshane. Most metal weapons would blunt aside, or bend. A blow from a stonestaff to the foreskull could stun, or even kill, an urukshane, but pierce the bone?

The rest of what Javalyn said began to sink in. “They can make lightning appear in empty air? And you claim they can do no magics?”

“Once, long ago, the deceits of the Dark Lord were called magic, but they were not. They were the cleverest of deceptions, the darkest of shadows, those we create within our own minds. When the Dark Lord corrupted the first uruks, it was not with magic, but with pain, torture, and fear. True magic was never his to give, though he had plenty of it himself. The spells his servants could wield had power, of course, but they could be defeated by one strong enough in mind. So the wizards of old and the Eldar wrote.”

“You have seen the writings of the wizards? Of the Eldar?”

“Yes.” Javalyn said. “One of the wizards lives still, at least. In fact, I imagine once we have off-loaded our supply of greyrock to Stonetrade we will sail for the Sunlands, and you will be given audience with him.”

Masaan clutched harder at the railing, unsure. Wizards played prominently in the Fire Book, but that was many centuries old. They had been Men! For all their power, nothing but Men, how could they live still? A line from the Fire Book came to him and he felt again stunned, having never truly contemplated it before.

“None knows when the Wizards first came, nor when they will forever depart, save Cirdan, because he was there, but he sailed to the West and his knowledge with him.”

Masaan had always believed this meant the Wizards were beings of mystical power who rathered there travails done in secret. He had never assumed it meant what Javalyn implied. Perhaps they simply never left, if they discovered in Middle Earta the power of immortal life. Perhaps they can bring back Elbereth...

“Masaan.” Javalyn said, pulling him back from reverie. “Do not think too much about the wizard. He is a small thing, little more than a gardener, a collector of animals and plants, and a sage of various types of pipeweed. Nothing more. If once he was, then he turned from that path long, long ago.”

“We travel to the Sunlands, then? To the Urukhainen?”

“Yes.”

“Do they know of the urukshane?”

“Yes.” Javalyn said, guarded, but firm, as though she had hoped he would eventually ask this very question.

“But they do not seek us out. Do they have ships.”

“Yes.”

“Why have they not sought their lost kin?”

“They have.”

Masaan glared at her. He did not need to demand an answer, and was not sure he wanted it. She gave it regardless.

“We have nothing they want. They have an Empire which stretches across the whole of the Sunlands and they have armies which could, if they were able, destroy the entire might of the urukshane. They do not seek us out because the Shorelord protects us from them. It is not just our ships which he cloaks in the mists of the green waves, but our whole land. They do not look all the different from us, and you will see that some number of our people dwell there, in the Sunlands, in the BloodShine Empire, as they name it. But the Shorelord is mighty and he sees their hearts are dry, he closes the paths to those who chose the BloodShine over the Ice.”

“And yet he does not stop you or your crew?”

“The salt cakes my heart, dear boy, I have lived as a Mistress of the Waves and I will sink beneath the green when I die, to be forever dancing under his waves.” She said this with hard, forceful solemnity.

Masaan nodded. He knew the strength of true faith. Javalyn was pure bound to this Shorelord as he was to Elbereth, to the Starlady. She looks to the depths of the oceans, I look to the depths of the skies of the night. Either way, there is much peace to be found.

Javalyn smiled, and it had the distinct note of finality. “You should go below and pray, Masaan. The Shorelord grants us passage, and his grace has never proven false before, but it is rare that he guides us with a soft touch. Soon his waves will fling us about and you will lose the ground beneath you.”

Masaan doubted her, but he did as she asked, nodding at her and climbing down from the railing, allowing the ship to swallow him.

Next Chapter: Chapter 15 - The Master