After the Cataclysm by Himring  

After the Cataclysm

‘Is it true,’ asked the ragged beggar in the town square. ‘Numenor is gone? The tyrant is dead?’

‘Hush,’ said one of the townspeople, with an anxious look toward Elendil, ‘yes, it is true. Ar-Pharazon is dead.’

The grey-haired beggar raised his head, emitting a jubilant ululation that rose out of his throat to the sky, and started to dance on the spot, gyrating in the town square, his rags flying about him.

Several of Elendil’s companions cried out in anger and grief. One of the guards seized the hilt of his sword.

‘Stop,’ said Elendil to the guard.

He went forward and spoke to the dancing beggar, even though his guards tried to prevent him, fearing the beggar was a madman and might attack without warning.

‘Tell me,’ Elendil asked, ‘why do you rejoice? Did my king do you wrong?’

The beggar stopped mid-gyration and answered. Elendil was close enough to smell him and notice a festering sore on his arm.

‘What wrong has Numenor not done to me? I am the last survivor of my village. The King and his army killed the rest.’

‘Slander!’ cried one of the Numenorean knights.

‘You are exaggerating, surely?’ muttered one of the bystanders to the beggar.

‘They must have done something to bring it on themselves,’ suggested one of the guards.

'I would not be so sure,' another whispered.

‘Is this man known to you?’ Elendil asked the townspeople.

‘We had never seen him before until he came today to beg at the market,’ they answered.

Elendil took out his purse.

‘This should contain enough to buy at least three meals’s worth and a donkey to ride on,’ he told the beggar. ‘Please leave the town. You are distressing my people. Their grief is still fresh.’

For a moment, he thought the beggar was going to argue, maybe even considered spitting at his feet. But then the beggar visibly sagged, grabbed the purse and left without a backward glance.

The moment he was gone, Elendil realized he had failed to ask the beggar’s name or the name of his village. It made no difference, as far as verifying the circumstances went. So many records had been lost that there was no way of tracing the name of a destroyed village, even if anyone had taken the time to write it down.  It could make no real difference to anyone but, still, Elendil would have wanted to keep it in mind.

There were, maybe, other things he could have done, but he had not been able to think of any, right then.

*

‘My father told me that in his youth he once saved the King from assassination during a campaign in Middle-earth,’ he told Elrond later.

It was late evening, and they were sitting alone together over a cup of wine.

‘It was an attempt at poisoning. The assassin had managed to smuggle a candied plum in among the syrupy sweets served for dessert. The poison was in its stuffing. My father got wind of the plot just in time. The dessert course was thrown out untouched. The assassin was executed.’

Elendil took a sip of wine.

‘The thing is, Elrond, my father admitted that the assassin had a legitimate grievance for which he had failed to get redress from the King’s court or the King. My father upheld the law, but the law was flawed, rotting from within.  By saving his life, my father won the King’s trust, for a while, and gained a measure of influence. And our family had always feared how many people would die, if Numenor started tearing itself apart in civil war. But as it turned out my father's actions only helped to defer the persecution of the Faithful for a while—and, as you know too well, the cataclysm followed. If my father had not saved Ar-Pharazon that day, how many people might still live? And not only Numenoreans…’

‘Maybe,’ said Elrond, ‘although, from what I hear, even if he was the King, Ar-Pharazon did not act alone. Was not Tar-Palantir also King and did he not work all his life to change the fate of Numenor?’

‘And failed,’ said Elendil. ‘Yes, that is true.’