The Burnt Man

Her imagination roams a tired circle, a hobbled northern nag. She is satisfied by the crumbled walls of the dry field she plods through. She seems to take delight in the fading of Arnor, in the slow withering of her people. Give her an open gate, and like a dim-witted child she will shut it fast again, prefering the small compass of the known to the vast and glorious world beyond.

Shut the walls away, close the eyes and dull the senses of sight and sound. There is nothing here in this room, this place, to comfort me. Nor in memory - I push Araenion and Vallandur away in my minds-eye. I float, aimless, like petals on water, spindrift. Foam riding on the ebb and flow of the sea.

I have seen them. Yes, of course. Awakening, yet ever-awake in the mind of their master. Hidden like precious pearls within the tight-closed shell of the black land. Shivered at their sightless gaze, groaned under the thrilling agony of their apprehension - I am a favoured Man.

Adunzil snaps small twigs and feeds the fire. I observe his graceful, spare movement through half-closed eyes as we change our watch and I prepare for sleep. The air is cool, though not too chill, the half-moon westering as night continues.

I shrug further into my cloak and hood. The night is peaceful, we are close enough to Nenuial for the eyes of our folk to keep the land quiet. I feel safe, as though held in the palm of my father, cradled by the solid earth and roofed by the trees.

Weeks have passed. Months. Seasons. I feel time passing beyond the solid walls of my prison. But this room is as changeless as pondwater - I know the exact number of all the stones in each wall, have counted every stitch in the single tapestry.

I no longer look through the thin, slim-slit window. The sight of the stars and the sun amongst the free clouds pierces me like a cold knife - the wound of imprisonment deep and unhealing. I weep dry-eyed and soundless now, inside. I am weary of weeping, but it does not end.

I despise cats. Skulking killers of the smaller birds, delicate and fragile. Birds that fill the air with sweetness and harm nothing.

My latest songbird hops about its gilded cage, whilst the northern woman is taken back to her captivity, more docile than when she was first taken.

It amuses me, then, to claim a cat as a kinsman, dark and sleek.

There are few women here. Those that live amongst us are either cooks or whores. Many are both. And even those who come disparaging the thought of lying on their back for a coin or for the offer of a strong protector, are usually put to whoring by the men in the end.

Let it be remembered - I gave her a choice.

I place my pen down, push the stopper back into the blue-black ink bottle, lean back into my chair. The lad quietly takes away my papers, placing them neatly to one side. He gathers them reverently now, as though anything I touch is imbued with some vital essence.

No time to think of what I have sown there. It is done.

But what is sown now?

The young man lies limp in my arms. His head rests on my broad chest as trusting as a maid, rising and falling with the ebb and flow of my breath. He smells as sweet as a girl, for all his twenty years. The low light from the dim brazier picks out the curl of his eyelashes, as the herb mixture pushes him deeper into sleep.

My right hand lies loose over the back of his bruised neck. My left limp over the curve at the base of his spine. I am mindful of the weals of the injuries striping him.

I am not a brute.

I had ter pay thirty copper coins fer that bath! But after an hour with that stinky Finch ... i had ter get the stink o' him off my hair, an' the filth o' his hogs offen my boots.

But Steora swifthand is a clever lass ... so I still made a few coin on the deal. An' I aint givin' the money back to the Burnt Man!

So Gyth's Burnt Man orders me ' Steora, you up an' go an' find The Finch.' An' I knows what He is like iffen I says no ... so I has to go down ter the Mud Gate through all that pig-filth and find him.