Duplicity by Prackspoor  

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Genesis

This story would not exist as it is now without the help of my beta: the wonderful, untiring RaisingCaiin. Thank you so much for all the proofreading, cross-checking, and the countless helpful suggestions you have offered in order to make this story as good as it was going to get.

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-A triptych in nine pictures-

 

Genesis

(Beginning)

 

 

I. Subjugation

You remember this fine September morning very well. The riverbanks are vested in rich greens and golds and autumn light, and you and Cousin Déagol have gone boating. You have already caught plenty of fish, more than enough to bring home for your matriarch to make a feast out of. You make a good team, you and Déagol.

Today Déagol is doing the fishing and whenever he pulls a wriggling, lively trout out of the quick, burbling waters, he tosses it to you, and you smash them against the side of the boat until they stop twitching and then throw them into the bucket where you collect the nice, fresh fish.

“Almost full, dear Déagol,” you cry. “Let us go home, and cook the fish, bring them to grandmother so she can fry them!”

But Déagol is not listening. He is staring out at the water to where his fishing line is zigging and zagging left and right through the water. “Last one, Sméagol, this is the last one,” he mutters and then he suddenly has to brace himself against the side of the boat. “It's a big one! The biggest one we've had yet, I'm sure of it!”

You immediately forget about returning home and instead crouch down at Déagol's side, grinning eagerly, while your eyes are darting left and right, staying firmly fixed on the fishing line. Déagol is a fine fisherman – albeit not as apt as yourself – as fine as any of the Stoors, so you are surprised when there is a sudden splash! and gone is your cousin, your dear cousin Déagol, gone beneath the water in a rush of bubbles and foam!

You hurry over, your eyes searching the blue-green surface of the river. “Déagol!” you cry out. “Déagol!”

The river is rushing and flowing and you hastily row the boat ashore – you can run faster than you can row, and if the river has pulled Déagol downstream, you will reach him quicker on foot. You have just set foot down on land, though, when there is a second splash and Déagol wriggles onto the shore, wet and glistening and pale, his mouth opening and closing in gasps and for a moment he reminds you very much of the fish you pull from the waters.

You hurry over to him, relieved and joyful – nothing has happened to your dearest cousin, he's alive and unharmed! – and you reach out to help him to his feet, but Déagol suddenly flinches and turns away from your touch as if it was unexpected or unwanted. You stare at his back and tentatively reach out to him again.

“Déagol, dear Déagol, what – ”

You fall silent when you look over his shoulder and see the thing he is clenching in his fist, a fist that is now slowly opening, full of slick mud – but there is something golden shining through the dirt, becoming more and more prominent as the mud slides off it, revealing a ring, more beautiful and magnificent than anything you have ever seen in your life, and for an instant, the golden ring grows to fill your entire vision and you hear–

 

– the call.

There is a mountain. A mountain wreathed in shadows and crowned with three white stars. He does not know when he had gone down on one knee and bent his head – but here he is, at the foot of this windswept mountain range, clouds racing above him and spiralling into a vortex above the mountain top. And the call that has been wrenching at his insides and raking over his brain for centuries is quiet for the first time.

But it is not true silence: it is the stillness before the plunge, the last reconsideration before the pledge, the moment of standstill before he realises that he has just leapt over the edge of the cliff and into the abyss.

His head is bent. He dares neither to look up nor to allow himself to grasp the full scope of what he has done and what he is about to do.

And then the mountain speaks:

Precious One. You have come to me at last.

– I have.

You have kept me waiting.

– You told me once that you do not approve of the half-hearted and the undecided. You posed a choice before me and the time I took to decide I measured not by the urgency of your desire to have me, but the the time I needed until I did no longer doubt my choice. Now I come here before you, and my decision is made.

The mountain shifts and the world itself is groaning beneath its weight. It leans forward and its shadow falls on the infinitely lesser being kneeling at its foot.

You were wise to do as you did. I do not accept those who are not coming to me of their own free will. I have no use for the hesitant and the dithering, I condone neither second thoughts nor second allegiances. You will excise old loyalties just as you will excise doubts and scruples from your mind. We will be ruthless in our endeavours, grand and cruel and decisive. There will be no excuse for hesitation after you join me. I will have you entirely, or not at all.

– You have me, for as long as you will it. Be it death, worship, or devotion – name it, and if it is mine to give, I shall give it to you.

Do you swear it?

– Upon my name.

Ah yes. Your name. A good name to swear upon: Precious you are called, and rightly so. You seem to have much to offer. Well, then my Precious One you shall be. My Precious you are, you are mine, and mine you will remain, even after the pillars of the world itself break down in fire and dust.

The mountains echo with the pledge – the cragged, rocky slopes throw back the mountain's acceptance of your oath, and you can hear it again and again and again, like a ghostly choir:

Precious, precious, precious...

 

You stare at the ring, the strange scene– or memory? – swimming before your eyes, and then fading to be replaced once more by the familiar riverside. You see Déagol prodding the ring with his plump, dirty fingers – and the fact that your dumb, fat cousin should hold this noble band of gold in his unworthy paws sends a spike of anger through your stomach.

And in your heart you suddenly know, as surely as you know the sky is blue, that you should have this ring, that it has come to you and not to him.

You step closer until your chin is almost resting on Déagol's shoulder.

“Déagol, my love,” you say, and Déagol jumps and whirls around, looking at you with wide, startled eyes – like a thief caught red-handed with his hand in the family jewel box. You can see him closing his fist around the ring and clutching it to his chest – as if it was his own, which it is not, and this makes you angry. But Déagol doesn't know this and so you smile, friendly and forthcoming. You're going to be patient, you are going to explain.

“What have you got there, Déagol, my friend?” you ask and sidle up to him, trying to catch a glimpse of gold between the gaps of his white-knuckled fingers.

Reluctantly, Déagol opens his fingers and there it is: you recognise the yellow band, even without its lines of fire, but unmistakable in its flawless beauty, catching the afternoon light in its splendour and covering its surface in the sheen of flames.

Both of you just stand there staring at the ring, mesmerised, and wondering what to do about it, for you would not ever have fathomed that something as wondrous as this could come into your possession – and now you have no idea what to do with it, except –

 

“So you discovered how to make Great Rings all by yourself.” A pale-robed figure, resplendent and glorious in a radiance of white and gold so bright it was almost painful on the eyes, paced up and down in front of another man, who was battered and bruised and tied to a chair in an oval room full of workbenches, upended shelves, scattered papers and shattered windows of coloured glass. “Tyelperinquar, Tyelperinquar, you never cease to surprise me. I am almost impressed enough to overlook your betrayal in favour of your ingenuity.”

“My betrayal?” the dark-haired man growled. “You – made a Ring as well!”

“Of course I did. It was my idea after all. I never thought there would be anyone able to imitate me, though.” The white-robed figure came to a halt before his captive, whose proud, regal features proclaimed him an Elf. “And yet you have managed to create three of your own even in my absence. I would commend you on your achievement, were it not for the fact that you have shamelessly stolen my work upon which you built yours.”

“This is not – true.” The elf bared his teeth and fought to tear himself free from the chair he was tied to, but failed. “It was my work as much as it was yours that enabled us to create them.”

In an instant, the white-robed man had whirled around and braced his hands on the armrests of the chairs, clutching the bound wrists of the prisoner so tightly the skin broke under his nails. “What did you say?” he snarled, his face only inches from that of the prisoner. “Oh, now we are back to 'us' and 'ours', Tyelperinquar? And is it not an awfully convenient time for it? Did you yourself not tell me that there would be no more 'us' and 'ours' for all eternity to come, after I had laid bare before you who I was?”

“I told you there no longer would be any collaboration between me and Sauron, and I meant it” the prisoner spat. “That does not make our past works, including the Rings, any less of my own.”

The two men stared each other down, both with their teeth bared like snarling wolves. The elf had blood seeping out of his gums. The teeth of the white-robed figure were sharp and pointed.

“Oh, we can argue about my rightful ownership later for all I care,” the white-robed man said quietly as he straightened, suddenly composed and calm once more. “I am sure I can get it even into your thick skull that I am right, given enough time and … persuasion. But let us just establish one simple fact, Tyelperinquar: if we are going to fight, I am going to win.” He gestured around at the destroyed workshop. “I have proven the point in the past, and I will do it again, if you give me any incentive to. So let me just tell you this one thing: I can simply take what I want from you. I am stronger than you. I am smarter than you. I have control over every little atom in your body and they'll come apart at my command.” He raised his right hand and there was a beautiful and horrible gold ring gleaming on its fourth finger, and it was engraved with thin lines of fire.

“But I would rather not do it,” the white-robed man said and let his hand sink. “I do not want to hurt you any more, Tyelperinquar. I am still unwilling to believe that the past five hundred years meant nothing to you.”

The elf tensed. “I will not talk about the past.”

“Then don't. But you will listen.” The white-robed figure stepped closer, until his robe was almost touching the knees of the bound prisoner. The elf leaned back in his chair as far as he could, but there was no escaping the looming presence above him. He stared up at the radiant figure, as beautiful and as cruel as the sun.

“Save your lies for someone willing to hear them,” the prisoner said, averting his face. “You proved yourself wrong and every single one of my misgivings true the moment you and your orc army shattered the gates of Ost-in-Edhil. You gave away any right for me to hear you out the moment you stepped over the threshold as a conqueror.”

The white-robed man gritted his teeth. “Stop being deliberately obstinate and look at what I did for you in order to show you that you must come back to me!”

“Did – for – me?” The prisoner almost choked. “You killed my friends, my brethren – you razed this city to the ground and torched its gardens, you destroyed the towers, and you flooded our aqueducts with the blood of those who were torn to shreds under the claws and teeth of your army. Annatar, if you ever have held any regard for me at all, be honest and admit that you did this for nothing else than your own petty revenge, your own perverse satisfaction, your greed and your cruelty—” His voice broke.

The white-robed man frowned. “Tell me truthfully that anything less would have sufficed to make you listen, and I'll throw myself at your feet and allow you to tie me to the chair you are sitting on this very instant. But you can't, can you? So you see, I had to do it – for you. For us. I told you who I was, and you refused to give me a chance. I thought that you were stronger than that, that there was more between us. I believed you—”

“Oh Elbereth,” the prisoner said, his voice hollow and broken. “Please don't say it.”

The white-robed figure went down on his knees in front of the prisoner. He reached out for the elf's face, but the prisoner jerked his head away.

“You see it now, don't you? I put too much trust in you, because for a while I believed you were more than your nature allowed you to be – which was my fault, I'll freely admit. I thought that you might be able to handle the truth, but you were too weak, Tyelperinquar. So in the end, you betrayed me and the trust I had in you. It was you who made me do this, regretful as it is… but it is fine, it is all right. I am not one to bear grudges. I forgive you, I forgive you, it is all in the past. I do not want to hurt you, my friend, my brother—”

“Don't –” the elf rasped.

The face of the ethereal being darkened briefly, like a cloud sliding in front of the sun, but it was gone just as quickly. “You think that you are in pain, but believe me when I say that this is nothing compared to the pain your suffering is causing me.”

“I am so sorry,” the elf spat and hacked up a clump of blood, “I can hardly imagine the torture I am putting you through.”

The white-robed figure gritted his teeth. “Indeed you can't. You are mine, my other half, my second being, and everything you force me to do to you, I am doing to myself three times over. ”

The elf bent forward as if in great agony. His dark, matted hair concealed his features. “By the Valar, Annatar! Are you even listening to yourself? Speaking as if somehow I was doing you an injustice, this is – this is – just stop talking, stop – talking!” His voice was raw and ragged.

“I won't stop talking, and you will listen,” the white-robed man said bluntly. “I am aware that our reunion has taken place under … adverse circumstances, but the way you are behaving is simply ridiculous. It is plain to see that you are throwing around accusations in a laughable attempt to justify fleeing the responsibility of every pledge of friendship you have ever made to me. But I am a gracious man, Tyelperinquar, and I will overlook it for the sake of the years we spent together. I will not let your childish volatility get in the way of our reconciliation, because I still mean what I told you all those years ago. After all, I don't go back on my promises – even after your betrayal, even after you averted your face from me.”

The elf groaned, and the white-robed figure grew in radiance until it shone so brilliantly the entire room was reduced to a bizarre two-dimensional plane of flat blacks and whites.

“I still do not want to hurt you. I would much rather you give up the Rings of your own free will,” the radiant being said. “Believe me. I am speaking nothing but the truth, when I say that I do not want to let any more harm come to you. I can sense that you want to believe me, so say the word and allow me to stop this, Tyelperinquar.”

The being was now made entirely of sunlight and fire, and it reached out and stroked over the matted, blood-clotted hair of the prisoner.

“My brother, my soul, I know you are proud, for so am I. So if you would not admit that I am the rightful owner of the Rings, if you would not relinquish the idea of their creation, would you at least gift them to me?” The light-being still stroked the broken prisoner, talking softly, but insistently. “Have I not given you countless gifts while I was still your guest? Have I not been generous and kind and just from beginning to end? Would you not grant me the Three in exchange?”

 

“Give it to us, Déagol,” you say and if there is anything strange about the way you speak, it escapes you, just like the look Déagol gives you.

Your cousin doesn't give the ring to you. He turns around. His fingers close around the ring again and you ignore the rush of wrath it sends through your veins, making your blood boil.

“Why?” he asks.

Well, that is a sensible question, you have to admit that. Because how could your cousin possibly know that the ring is meant to be yours and not his, if he hasn't felt that same intimate connexion to it that you felt immediately when you laid eyes upon it?

“Because it is our birthday,” you say and you feel very smart for coming up with such a good reason, not the least because it is true. (At least you think it is. Your family does not really care about keeping the records of the babes born into your clan up-to-date, or very much in order for that matter. There is a good chance that it is your birthday, though, and it is reason enough.) “And because we wants it.”

Déagol throws you a brief glance, and his fingers slowly close around the ring. You can't remember moving, but suddenly your arm snatches forward and your fists close around empty air. For a moment you stare at your empty palm uncomprehendingly, then you look up at Déagol, who has once again clutched his fist to his chest and is backing away from you like a wary animal.

You are angry. You are so very angry. But your mouth twists into a smile, of all things, when you lunge again.

 

 

II. The Murder

You throw yourself at Déagol with all your weight – which isn't much – and all your rage, which makes up for any physical shortcomings you might have had. You knock Déagol over and both of you go tumbling to the ground.

Déagol wriggles like an eel under you, but he's neither as fast nor as slippery as one, and holding him down is almost too easy. “Sméagol!” he cries. “Stop!”

“Give it to us!” you hiss.

“No!” Déagol tries to roll himself on his stomach, hiding his hands under him where you cannot reach them.

You scrabble at his shoulders and try to wrench him back around, not so much furious as deeply annoyed at the fact that your dumb cousin is making all the trouble necessary in the first place. Why can't he just give you the ring? Now if you only had a big log, you could beat him over his stupid, fat head with it just like you usually slam your caught fish against the hull of the boat, and be done with this hassle. But alas, there is none to be found, just grass and—

Déagol keeps struggling. You manage to wrench him around at last, and you see his pale, frightened face, the widened eyes, and all of sudden the revelation strikes you that this is your cousin, your beloved cousin you are hurting, and your grip falters—

 

“You see, I still don't think you understand the lengths I am willing to go in order to salvage what existed between us.” The white-robed man circled the prisoner, who was tied to the surface of a table spattered with blood, and bone splinters, and came to a halt directly at the head end of the table, staring down at the elf.

The elf stared back. “I don't usually explain this to anyone smarter than a five-year-old, but – you don't salvage things by breaking them, Sauron.”

The white-robed man braced his hands against the table on both sides of the elf's head, seemingly uncaring whether he was dragging his white sleeves through the mess of blood and bones and intestinal fluids that had sprayed everywhere. “You give me no other choice, seeing how willing you are to throw everything away in the face of a minor complication—”

The elf burst out laughing. “Minor complica—,“ he tried to say, but the words were lost in a groan of pain. “Are you even listening to yourself? If there ever was something worthwhile that you—we had, your betrayal—has unmade it,” the elf choked out. A bubble of blood burst in the corner of his mouth.

The white-robed man bared his teeth again. “No. No. No. This is where you are wrong. You are judging me by your own flighty and atrociously low standards. I'm not like you, discarding every notion of honesty and friendship in the face of adverse circumstances. You were the one talking so grandly about hope and love, and yet here we are and it is me holding up the end of the bargain that you once proposed.” The white-robed man leaned down as if to kiss the tortured wretch, his golden hair sliding forward over his shoulder, but stopped when he was mere inches from the elf's face. “There was something,” the white-robed man said quietly, “and it was worth fighting for and I will fight for it, even if it means fighting you, my friend.”

“Then you know even less about love than I thought,” the elf answered.

The white-robed man's mouth twisted into something that looked like a smile, and yet was anything but. “I know enough not to let it get in the way of my ambitions.”

 

—your fingers tighten around Déagol's shoulders once more.

“Give it to us!” you snarl.

“No,” Déagol gasps. “Let – go!”

You bare your teeth. Your hands are wrapped around Déagol's closed fist, trying to pry his fingers open.

 

The white-robed man straightened up and all of a sudden he was holding a long serrated knife. “The Three, Tyelperinquar.”

“Over my dead body.”

Sunlight glinted on the knife blade.

“Oh, that can be arranged.”

 

Déagol's finger snaps with a sickening noise. Your cousin screams. His screams are loud and shrill and they hurt your ears and you clamp your hands over his mouth just to keep him from making the horrible noise, but he doesn't stop, he doesn't stop – your stupid fat cousin just won't stop screaming – now if he would just give the ring to you, you'd go and leave him alone and have some peace and quiet –

“Stop! Sméagol! Stop!” His words are muffled by your hands, and then he tries to bite you.

You growl and wrap your long fingers around his throat. Déagol thrashes and wriggles, while the colour is slowly draining from his face. He tries to break your grip, but you put your weight down on his throat, teeth gritted and breath held. Déagol is heavier, but you are stronger. Déagol squirms and he tries to rake his fingers over your face, but already his strength is failing him. His punches and scratches are helpless and aimless. A rush of triumph washes over you, and it only makes you press down harder. You feel his windpipe giving way under your hands.

Déagol's eyes are bulging out of his skull and his gaze becomes unfocused. His mouth opens and closes and with all the colour draining out of his face, he reminds you of the fish you used to pull out of the water – because sometimes you would not kill them immediately, but gently lay them down in the hull of the boat and watch them gasp for water until their eyes turned empty and blind. Your cousin is just like the fish and it disgusts you – slimy, wriggly – and moreover, he is a thief.

Déagol paws at your face once more, now as weak as kitten. His fingers cramp into claws and then his hand falls away. It takes you a few more moments to realise that your cousin isn't struggling any longer.

Your fingers are hurting from the exertion and it takes a great deal of effort to unclench them from Déagol's throat. You sit back and stare down at your cousin, realisation trickling in combined with horror – what have you done?

You crouch closer to your cousin. His eyes are open, but unseeing.

“Déagol?” you ask, your voice feeble.

 

The evening sunlight fell through the windows, painting the white walls and the ceiling red, and painting the red of the blood that had sprayed everywhere black.

The world was dead, and the day was following in its footsteps. It was summer, but there was no bird to be heard, no voices in the courtyards outside.

The room itself was chaos. Paper and parchment were scattered everywhere, most of it drenched in the puddle of blood that filled the middle of the workshop like a little lake. There was a table that was dark with blood, and it had been thrown sideways as if overturned in a fit of rage. In its shadow, a dark figure was lying on the floor, crumpled and curled up on its side. The evening sun did not touch the figure. The light slanted overhead in a hypotenuse to the catheti of the floor and the upended table, spreading a merciful prism of shadow over the crumpled body and hiding all but its legs from view.

In another corner of the room, something else shifted. A second figure disentangled itself from the deepening shadows. White robes, smeared in blood and other unspeakable things. Long sleeves dragged through the dirt and the fluids on the ground, as the second figure crawled over to the overturned table on his hands and knees. The once immaculate gown was torn and stained, but its owner did not care.

The white figure crouched down beside the shadowed form of the prisoner.

“Tyelpe.” The white figure nudged the lifeless form of the elf. “Tyelpe.” Another nudge. No response. The white figure made a sound like a wounded animal. “Tyelpe. Get up. Get up. I said, Get up!”

His arm jerked forward, his fingers bent to claws, and the Ring on his fourth finger glowing like fire. And the shadowed figure moved, but its movements were not of the living. They were jerky, uncoordinated, as if a puppeteer was pulling the strings from above. Slowly, the prisoner surfaced from the pool of shadow that had hid him from the face of the world, and raised himself up into the red evening light.

The white figure stared at it – the lolling head, the empty eyes, the sagging shoulders, realising that this was not what he wanted, not at all – and then let his hand drop. The body of the prisoner collapsed back onto the ground: a puppet with its strings cut.

The white figure stared some more and then a long, drawn-out wail wrenched itself from his throat and he gathered the corpse up in his arms and cradled it close to his chest like a child might hold a dead kitten, and rocked back and forth on his heels, burying his face in the blood-clotted hair of his friend.

“What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?” He repeated it over and over again, as the sun sunk lower and the rectangle of red light wandered further and further up the wall. Darkness gathered, and the only thing growing in brightness was the ring on the fourth finger of his right hand.

Then, all of a sudden, the white-robed man stilled completely. He raised his head and the expression on his face was no longer harrowed and mournful, but blank. And just as suddenly, a humourless smile worked itself over his face from left to right, like a wound being slashed with a knife.

He still held the corpse and he looked down at it. His smile seemed frozen in place, but then it disappeared as fast as it had come and he looked almost annoyed. “You must not think ill of me, it had to be done,” he said, his tone slow and deliberately patient, as if talking to a slow child. “I told you they were mine. You could not keep them from me. You betrayed me by withholding what was mine to begin with. I tried to reason with you, I attempted to make you see that you were in the wrong and I was in the right, but you would not listen. You refused me, my brother, my love, and so you forced me to hurt you. If you had only given them freely...”

 

You tear your gaze away from Déagol's waxen face, over to where his hand has landed in the grass. His fist is slightly open, his unhurt fingers only partially bent, the broken finger sticking out at a weird angle, and you can see it –

You scramble over and pry the ring from your cousin's hand.

Yours. Yours. It has come to you. You look over to Déagol and you fail to see why you were horrified at his murder only moments ago. Clearly your cousin has brought it upon himself. Had he not been so stubborn and tried to withhold the ring from you, you would not have laid a finger on him. It was his fault, you tell yourself.

His fault alone.

But, you realise, the others won't see it like this. The others won't understand if you tried to explain to them why two of you went fishing and only one of you came back. They won't understand that it was Déagol who brought it all upon himself: the broken fingers, the white face, and the finger-shaped bruises around his throat.

You close your fists tighter around the ring and bring them to your lips, and as if to calm a baby, you whisper into the hollow of your hands: “Don't worry, my Precious, they won't get us, my Precious, we'll go far, far away and they'll never find us. They will never know. They will never take you away from us.”

 

 

III. The Darkness

You carry the Precious far away from habitable lands, far from grabbing hands and nagging, unsympathetic family, and greedy cousinses who could take it away from you. You wander the land, keeping to little streams and the underbrush, living on berries and roots and raw fish, not caring to see other living beings, and taking care not to be seen by them in turn. Soon your only company save for the Precious is the snapping of twigs when hares or foxes flee from you, and the song of birds, which you grow to detest more and more with every passing day.

But the deeper the silence of the world grows around you, the louder the whispering of the Precious becomes. The further you flee from civilisation, the less you can pretend to be alone.

Sometimes you have the feeling that as you wander someone else is walking next to you: an oppressive presence, uncomfortably close to you and impossible to shake off. In the beginning, you try to outsmart it by venturing back onto beaten paths and into the sunlight—for the voice is always quieter and the presence less threatening when you wander under the face of the sun.

But just as you have begun to loathe birdsong, you have begun to hate the cruel bright ball of fire in the sky. It looks like an eye to you, too curious, too unblinking, and following you wherever you go. You hate the feeling that it might be watching you and the Precious, that it always knows where you go – and soon you find yourself in the shadow of the trees again, trying to evade the sun's gaze and its light, which stings your eyes so cruelly that you often cry yourself to sleep when you are curled up in an abandoned badger den or fox burrow.

But when you lie in the darkness, the voice and the dreams return.

 

… a dark land, a closed land, a land where he didn't have to bear to look at the sun and the stars. He raised his hand, the inscription on the Ring glowing like fiery veins, and he felt the world leaping to attention to obey him. A swift motion of his arm, and he drew clouds over the sky like a curtain, shutting out the watchful eyes of eagles and the disapproving presence of celestial bodies. He then lifted both hands like a conductor signalling a crescendo to an invisible choir– and from the flat plain the mountains rose like a wall.

He saw that he was alone , he saw that the land was dark – and he saw that it was well. And the dark mountains echoed with his laughter.

 

You carry the Precious deep into the mountains. It's been long since you have seen another living being save for the trout in the burbling stream that you are following up the rocky slopes. The Precious is heavy in the pocket of your torn breeches. Its whisper is now constantly in your head, but you have gone far from inhabited places with nasty thieves, and it is content for now. It appreciates the loneliness and the darkness when you enter the mountain through a cleft in the stone and go deeper and deeper and deeper, until you reach the ancient roots of the mountain. You are now unfathomably far away from the world, unfathomably deep under the stone, and its weight over your head is terrifying and comforting at once.

Here no one is going to find the Precious.

You spend your waking time hunting for the blind pale fish that lives in the black ponds in the underground caverns. Your sleeping time, however, is filled with ash and brimstone, wheels and fire.

 

The Tower is rising. It is a gigantic monstrosity of black iron, but you have folded the sheets of metal as easily as a lesser being would fold paper. It is a jagged, cruel shape – like a knife pointed upwards to slash at the belly of the sky itself. Building it has almost been too easy, and at some points, you have found yourself almost annoyed by the lack of real challenge. You feel that a work like this should require more effort, even with the Ring, and that its completion should result in a greater sense of achievement. On the other hand, the ease with which you have fortified his land is a testament to the efficiency you had in mind when you created the One – so if the creation of a perfect instrument conclusively resulted in a game that is unfairly skewed in your favour, you are willing to graciously take it as a compliment to your excellence of mind, and seek your challenges elsewhere.

Like in the recovery of the other Rings, for example. You have to give Celebrimbor credit for being either generous or stupid enough to give the Three away in order to hide them. It has not saved him in the end, because none of his kin obviously deemed it necessary to come to his aid when Eregion was sacked, but it complicates matters for you: the Elves were reluctant to use the Three in battle, and they are irritatingly good at hiding them from you.

But you are patient.

If there is anything you have in abundance, it's time.

 

You wake with a strange feeling of dislocation in your head, and a weight on your chest as if something heavy is lying on top of you. You gasp and gargle and twist around, and scurry down a narrow tunnel on all fours before your mind manages to shake off the remnants of the dream, and you realise that you are alone. Or – as alone as you will be at any given time, anyway. The Precious is heavy in your trousers, which are barely recognisable torn pieces of cloth by now, worn through at the knees and shins. The dream still clings to you and you have a suspicion that something has been different this time. You shy away from closer examination, however. The dreams are bad enough as they are, and you hurry to forget them after you have woken up. Thinking about them will not solve anything.

You decide to stay awake for the next few days.

As it turns out, this no longer solves anything either.

 

Long hallways, dark and ominous. Jagged pillars. Fire.

Long tunnels, black and twisting. Stalactites and stalagmites forming bizarre subterranean landscapes. The ever-present drip drip drip of water somewhere above your head.

You see both of those images at once and more than once you walk into a stone wall or a stalagmite, because the dream hallways are overlaying your tunnels, and you take a turn in a reality that is not yours. Blood drips from your forehead and into your eyes, and you curl up and cry.

“Leave us alone!” you wail. “Leave us alone!”

The darkness under the mountain swallows your pleas. There is no answer and no mercy to be found here.

Sometimes, when you're just about to fall asleep, you believe you can hear the echo of a hoarse, manic laugh somewhere, but its source is not in this world. It's all in your head – or is it?

You keep dreaming of dark clouds and ashen plains and fire. Even in your waking time the invisible presence is always there, always beside you. Somewhere around that time, goblins start to infest the mountains again, multiplying like rats in a granary.

The Precious seems heavier. And it speaks to you. The Precious is always with you – even when you have left it behind at the lake on one of your stints to the tunnels higher up, and it whispers ideas into your head, full of violence and darkness. You can feel its agitated hum when you wait for a company of goblins to pass you by. You feel its excitement when you wait for the careless straggler at the end of the queue while you lurk hidden around a corner and prepare yourself to jump. You feel a rush of bloodlust and violent joy when you leap on the goblin’s back from behind and twist its nasty neck.

You do this over and over and over again. You do not have to take the risk, but you do not like them invading your mountain, and you can't drive them out by force. Your only option is to pick them off one by one, and watch and wait how the goblins first grow suspicious, then wary, and finally afraid.

You enjoy being the hunter. One day, you find one of their earlier meeting places in the lower tunnels abandoned, rickety contraptions for sleeping and cooking broken down or hastily disassembled and forgotten.

“We chased them away, my Precious,” you say. “Nasty goblinses, they are afraid of us.”

“We did,” the Precious answers you in your own voice. “Well done, Sméagol.” Then its tone changes and becomes sharp, “And now go back to the lake. You've been gone for too long, we must look after the Precious!”

You flinch as fear pierces your heart like a claw, and you hurriedly turn around. “Yes, yes, yes, go back to the lake, look for the Precious! Stupid Sméagol, careless Sméagol! We forgots, we forgots!”

“Yes, you are stupid,” the Precious says. “But do not worry, you have me to look out for you, don't you?”

“Yes, yes,” you say, afraid of angering the Precious any further. “Sméagol has the Precious.”

“It's not yours, you insolent fool,” the Precious hisses through your teeth. “I belong to myself, and no one else!”

“Yes, yes, yes,” you hurriedly agree. “But the Precious looks out for Sméagol, that's what Sméagol wanted to say.”

“I guess I do,” the Precious replies, still irritated, but thankfully no longer furious. “You are lucky to have me, Sméagol. You are alone and weak and miserable. I am your only friend. I advise you try to keep me happy if you want it to stay that way. You don't want me to leave you, do you?”

Yes, you think briefly, go away and leave us alone – but at that thought pain spikes in your head as if someone had driven a knife through your chin, up your mouth and into your brain. “No, no, no,” you wail and you pause your crawling to make an awkward four-legged bow, flattening your face on the stone floor while you try to chase all those treacherous, nasty thoughts from your mind. “Anything for the Precious, anything! The Precious must stay with poor Sméagol, Sméagol has no one else, no one who loves him, no one who is his friend!”

“Stop your yammering,” the Precious interrupts you. “Go back to the lake and look for the Precious. You must keep it safe.”

You oblige and sprint back to the lake, eager to hold the Precious in your hands once more. When you arrive, however, the Precious is nowhere to be found. At first you cannot believe it, and you think that you have simply overlooked it. There is no goblin who would find its way here to the lake deep under the mountain unless it followed you – and it is almost impossible to follow you unnoticed these days.

“Where is it? Where is it?” you say, growing more and more frantic as you dig through torn clothes and goblin armour and fish-bones. You try to ignore the mounting anger of the Precious.

“Where is it, Sméagol?” it asks you. “Where have you put it?”

“We put it here, we put it here!” you cry.

“Then why is it not here, Sméagol?” the Precious snarls and your head suddenly feels like it’s exploding from the inside. You wail and fall over, clutching your head with both hands and twisting on the floor, screaming half from frustration and half from pain.

“They took it!” you cry. “They took it away from us! Someone took it away from us!”

“Then we have to find it!” the Precious says, its voice low and dangerous. “We have to look for it! Go! Find them!”

You struggle to your feet again. “Yes, yes, find them,” you say, tears streaming down your face, but your face already twisting into a grimace of hatred. There is an unfamiliar smell in the air. Not goblin, not fish, but something else. Someone else has been here. And you think you can follow their trail. “We find them and we twist their nasty neckses and rip their nasty eyeses out.”

“Yes,” the Precious growls.

And you run off, back into the darkness of the twisting tunnels, the stench of the thief in your nose. You cannot fathom what it was that has dared to take the Precious from you, but you know one thing for sure: you are going to make them regret taking what is yours.

You slip through the tunnels, your steps and your rage as silent as the lake you are leaving behind.