Chapter 7 – Neldoreth

His breath caught as he lurked behind the large outcrop of rock, Neldoreth licked his dry lips. Sanity had begun returning to him in flashes as he traveled. Mostly during the day. At night the voice whispering to him grew strong and he was lost to it. But the light of day held the voice back, for it feared that light most.

Anna.

Neldoreth looked up at the disc of orange and yellow flame canting across the sky. It spoke to him with familiar sibilance, with calls of things so old, so lost, only the memory of memory remained. Nothing of substance existed in Neldoreth’s remembrances of his past, but there were pieces still, enough to grant him sadness at the sight below.

Men.

Strange men.

Below the peak of the small hill a group of about fifty men were bivouacked, surrounded by wains with high, rounded peaks. Fires burned in the center of those wagons, even in the bright daylight as women busied themselves with laundry, cooking, and other chores. The men were busy also: some braiding leather thongs, whittling wood, tending to horses, or drinking from fat-bottomed skins. None of the assembled Men looked familiar to Neldoreth. His bare memory of what Men were, what they should be was fragmented at best, shattered at worst, by the long Dark and the White.

Still, he feared them. The Dark Whisperer, usually hidden in cavernous recesses of Neldoreth’s mind during the day fogged out with tentative tendrils.

Fear them! Fear their swords! Fear their might! Run from them!

But even in his ruinous state Neldoreth could hear the lie on the nonexistent tongue of the Dark Whisperer. It did not fear the men. It loathed them. It envied them. Because they could die. Because they had the Gift.

The Gift!

Neldoreth almost cried out in sadness at remembrance. Once; long, long ago, the Gift had been a curse for most Men, and something of disdain in the eyes of Neldoreth’s kith and kin. Now, he understood the beauty of it. The solace. The promised rest after labor. The dreamless sleep. The freedom.

Sensing Neldoreth’s mood; the Dark Whisperer, for all its desire to be granted the Gift feared still to court it, chided Neldoreth.

Stay hidden. Stay alive! They will kill us!

Neldoreth’s breath came back to him and he jerked himself back, behind the edge of the rocky outcrop, into a dense slice of shadows, a cool spot away from the cleansing fire of Anna.

Anna.

As if driven by primal urge and perfect need Neldoreth’s right hand levitated towards Her, grasping, pleading, only to close into a fist as the Dark Whisperer asserted itself. This dichotomy had become woven into Neldoreth’s conscience. The Dark Whisperer and he were halves of the whole now. Still, his soul was something the Dark Whisperer could not wholly taint or erase and it yearned for Her.

Anna.

That was not her name, of course. It had another, holier. But Neldoreth had forgotten it in the webs of the Dark Whisperer. A bank of clouds drifted in front of the Sun and Neldoreth sighed as the foul chants of the Dark Whisperer eased, its power relenting. Neldoreth closed his eyes, basking in the relief of not having to fight His voice for a moment. The sweeping joy of being alone with himself again. It did not last for long.

“Oi! What the gory fuck are you?” A man’s voice said, shattering the moment.

Neldoreth’s eyes flicked open and he tried to run, to escape the sound, in blind fear, but he was not what he once was. And Men were no longer what they once were. Neldoreth had hardly made ten paces when something burst into his shoulder and he collapsed in pain, balled himself into a fetal position, hands covering his head. The Dark Whisperer crowed its terror and fear, for it felt what Neldoreth felt. They were one.

“Jorkins!” the man shouted. “Appleton! Come help me up the hill! There’s some kinda wildman up here! Stark naked in the sun, with fungus on his skin!”

The words penetrated Neldoreth’s ears. He understood, though they were part of a language never heard by ears of his kind, much less his ears. The languages of Men are all known to me. Neldoreth had once been a singer of great renown, even among his people, whose voices were as crystalline pure as starlight on mountain streams. He had known every language spoken on the middle of the Earth. This one rhymed with that knowledge, broken and beaten in Neldoreth’s mind by the long Dark, but still there. The Dark Whisperer retreated to a cold, deep place in the Neldoreth’s mind, terrified, for he feared Men above all. Tenatively, Neldoreth opened his eyes.

The clouds had passed. Anna shone down, bright but not hot, upon him. Neldoreth made a sound of luxury at the touch of her against his skin. It was a wholly new experience, though it had happened often since he fled the Thousand Caves. Each time she touched his skin he remembered the glory of what had been, if nothing about that glory. It was as if he could recall only the result but not the action which caused it.

“Eh? What’re you smiling about there, fella?” the man said as he leaned over Neldoreth. The man’s face came to fruition in Neldoreth’s vision. “Are ya blind, fella? Every bit of your eyes is white as a baby’s arse. And what’s that grey on your skin? You plague-bitten?”

The last part of the man’s words were tinged with the xenophobic fear, so familiar to Neldoreth from the crowing of the Dark Whisperer. He wanted to run from that fear, but it was part of him and he could not escape it so easily. Neldoreth made a sound in birdsong, a plea for help, for relief from the pain blossoming in his shoulder. This seemed to confused the Man.

“What kind of crazy are you, fella? Chirping at me like a bird? Damn fool. Jorkins. Good. Gimme that blanket.” A scratchy, but soft, wrap enveloped Neldoreth. It was almost luxurious, aside from the fear-laced warblings of the Dark Whisperer.

Blanket.

Neldoreth bit at the word in his mind, chewed until it became familiar.

That which wraps around, protects from the cold. From the Night.

The pain in Neldoreth’s shoulder eased. “Careful there, Jorkins, don’t touch him. He might have some kinda plague. Them savages carry strange diseases, you know.”

The rest of the words the Men spoke entered Neldoreth’s mind and were held there. But he was lost again, for a time. The pain, the confusion, the newness of it all kept him curled within himself, but it also kept the Dark Whisperer in a deep, black hole. Distantly, Neldoreth was aware of being lifted and carried. Of being tossed around within some conveyance. Some length of time passed, but he was not sure of the duration. When the comfort and dark of the blanket was removed, Neldoreth found himself sounded by stone, in a cold room, alone.

He struggled, but could not move.

A wary voice called to him. A Man’s voice.

“You aren’t well, fella. You were shot by one of them musker guns. Might not want to struggle so much, or the wound’ll open up. I’ve seen men in far better shape than you die from infection after that. Damn muskers.”

Neldoreth heard the words, understood them, loosely, but this did not stop him from struggling against firm bonds across his wrists, ankles, and chest.

The man Neldoreth could hear, but not see, made a vexed sound. “I see you’re going to be difficult. But I hardly expected much else. You are certainly an odd fella. Judging by...” Neldoreth felt a soft touch caress him near the crook of his elbow. Another on the side of his neck. “these discolorations and this fungus on your skin, I’d say you’ve been underground quite a long time. Maybe so long you forgot who you were before.”

Neldoreth cackled in response to this. He remembered exactly who he was. It was everything else he had only vague memories of.

I am Neldoreth. Bard to the King of the Thousand Caves. Singer of Songs and Elf of the...

Neldoreth’s thoughts were interrupted by stirrings from the Dark Whisperer. It did not like when Neldoreth remembered himself. Lacings of fear traced through Neldoreth’s thoughts, but the strangeness of his surroundings were stronger than the mutterings of the Dark thing which lived in Neldoreth’s mind. The man gently stroked an area beneath Neldoreth’s ribs and made another vexed sound.

“These fungal growths... I’ve never seen anything like it. How you managed to stay alive, I can’t say. It’s almost like someone has kept you in captivity for a decade or two!”

A decade!

Or two!

Neldoreth cackled, genuinely amused by the man’s words. Perhaps his first real awareness of amusement in so long the entire experience felt utterly brand new. The Dark Whisperer fled deeper within, it hated amusement almost as much as it hated the Sun, men, or starlight. The white film around Neldoreth’s eyes thinned and light entered his mind. He began to take shape of his surroundings, and his thoughts were disturbingly clear, for a brief moment.

Stone.

I am in a house of stone.

But where am I?

The Men of Stone died long ago.

Didn’t they?

Neldoreth breathed a deep breath, allowed the sense of smell, so refined in his kin, to work for him. It brought him a new set of words.

Leather. Feathers. Kidskin. Duck.

Then something sharp, sharper than any scent Neldoreth had ever known. For a moment he wanted to believe it a brew of evil, some potion of Might, some foul thing of the Pit of the Dark Lord, but his nose told him different. It was natural, only superbly so. Purely so. Distilled to the point of being almost perfect. A single, solitary substantive part of existence pared away from all other things.

How lonely it must be...

How lonely...

Like me.

Next Chapter: Chapter 8 - Khrashnak