Disclaimer: I do not own the Silmarillion or Akallabêth
Pairings: none (except the background stuff)
Characters: Tar-Míriel, Sauron, (mentions random other people, Ar-Pharazôn, Varda, the Valar and Eru)
Warning: canon-compliant, dysfunctional (probably non-con) marriage, lots of non-explicit sexual content and undertones, human sacrifices and dark rituals
Song: Zero no Chouritsu
Words: 1,230
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voice (noun): sound produced by vertebrates by means of lungs, larynx, or syrinx; especially sound so produced by human beings
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/voice?show=0&t=1372898510
It was sickening. Sickeningly beautiful. An enchanted nightmare from which she could not awaken.
She heard the women of court speak about him often enough. About his face that put even the elves to shame with its perfect symmetry and elegant curves of cheeks and nose. About his hair spun of pure gold spilling down his shoulders and gleaming as a halo about his sun-kissed face. About his unique eyes set as fire-opals in burnished ivory, how they glowed in the dim twilight as a fire in the dark, full of sultry mystique.
About how pleasurable he was to draw into bed, though to that she could not herself personally attest, for the King would not allow even his closest counselor into his wife's chambers. But even if he had, she would not have allowed that monstrous, two-faced harbinger of destruction and chaos into her bed and between her sheets.
She hated him.
She hated his glorious face with his full, enticing lips and his rose-tinted cheeks and his mouth full of ever-so-slightly sharpened teeth so white they burned the eyes. She hated his golden curls, wanted to wrap her hands within those soft tendrils and pull them out at the root and throw them in the fire if only to watch them burn. She hated also his lava-eyes with veins of fire running through molten scarlet, wished she could blind them so they could never look upon her through half-hooded lids as a man looks upon a woman after whom he lusts and hungers.
But most of all, she hated his voice. Wished she could strangle the sound out of him so that he might never again taint her ears with its filthy tenor. Wished that she had the strength and the claws and the pure vicious ill intent to come upon that creature as he slept and rip out his vocal chords, to shred them and burn them upon the altar of her Lord, the One, so that he might not corrupt any more minds with honeyed, tender words, sweetness disguising the poison eating away at pure thoughts.
"Have you not heard it? So beautiful and soothing."
It was all a lie, a stalking predator with a pleasing façade created to drag in its prey without the wildness of the chase and the blooded capture. She watched him stroke maiden's delicate cheeks and brush his tainted lips across pale, throbbing wrists and had to turn away in disgust.
Yet when she heard those dulcet tones, their gentle rise and fall, hardly but a whisper upon the wind, she was no more immune to their spell than the rest of her pathetic mortal companions--her handmaidens and her chambermaids and her courtiers' wives. When his voice washed across her ears--
"How lovely thou art this eve, my Queen."
--hot blood still rushed under her skin. And within the recesses of her mind, she felt the glare that refused to form upon her face and the sneer that refused to curl her pursed, painted lips direct themselves towards the sultry little smile at the corners of his mouth and the knowing look in his fiery gaze. But on the outside, she was as a puppet, helpless to his whims. Under his enchantment.
An enchantment all who heard him fell into, as one falls off a cliff into the tides of the sea. She, her friends and loved ones, her husband and King.
He was dangerous.
"Full of wisdom and offering great knowledge with graciousness."
And that any fool thought otherwise baffled her. That her husband, whom she had once perhaps loved a very long time ago--well before the death and darkness shadowing her beloved home--could so easily fall into the trap of complimentary words on a feigned sincere breath left her reeling. For even she could see that Sauron desired only the devastation of her people in his jealousy and will too control and conquer. He cared nothing for their troubles or problems or inevitable deaths.
He wanted only power.
And it was on his voice. In the slippery tones, the bubbling muck of acid and noxious filth hidden beneath what appeared as untainted, clear waters. To the ears of her husband and King, advice was imparted genuinely, but she knew it was all a farce. Even though it was undeniably--
"Golden and hot, like amber and fire..."
--low and seductive, such that he could bend anyone and anything to his will. It slid over her skin like bare hands, writhing under her dress and curling about her thighs and belly until she was hot and anxious with its rise and fall. It was beautiful, the sleek, glistening sight of candlelight on bared flesh. But she would never give in to false sincerity and blatant lust for sexual satiation and will to dominate.
Nor would she ever believe that he held her people's interests at heart.
"Worship the Darkness. It is the only path to freedom."
She would never believe that Eru Ilúvatar--the One and only creator of the universe who watched over all of them as His own children--would sanction the atrocities that rained down upon her people and sullied their temples. Spilled blood and sacrifices--children torn from their parents to be burned at the stake, maidens with their throats slit for the sake of virginal crimson splatters on the marble floors and those few who were still loyal driven from their homes and hunted like animals for sport.
At his bidding. Because, with a few whispered words in the King's ear, greased in obsequious loyalty and layered in pure sugared toxin, Ar-Pharazôn was bending over backwards to please the stranger--the prisoner incarcerated in a palace of golden influence.
Sickening.
Slowly, that voice was destroying her people. More than his looks. More than his eyes. More even than his armies.
"When I hear him speak, I simply cannot look away."
And part of her admired him in a horrible way. Part of her still was enamored with him as a maiden and as a politician. Helplessly enraptured. Only that tiny murmur in the back of her mind kept her sane--kept her pure and rational. Kept her looking up at the stars and praying that the Lady Varda would hear her words of remorse and pleas for forgiveness. That perhaps there would be some mercy for those few of her people truly still within their right minds and with faithful hearts.
And she hoped, in the end, that that voice would be silenced. So that it might never again rip apart nations and destroy hearts. So that no poor soul beyond her own would ever have to know that--even as they stared in hopeless fascination, addicted to the elegant flourishes and courtly tones and melodic twirls of vibrations--that they were being betrayed and twisted. That all they loved and worked for crumbled before their gaze and they could do naught but languish beneath that melody of disaster and watch.
That those very sounds with which but a few syllables could turn the tides of the world itself were the tones of wickedness and sin. That, in the end, they would be the downfall. And everything would fall to pieces.
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So yeah, this was a very random idea that came to me when I was listening (again randomly) to Zero no Chouritsu (by Tsukiko Amano) last night. You'd think, having known what I would write, I would have finished it before now, but driving days are hellish and busy, not to mention the half-dozen relatives we had to stop and socialize with on the way. Okay, so it wasn't that terrible, but it did result in a late update.
Anyway, hope you don't mind the strange jump. I've never really been all that interested in the Akallabêth until I became interested in Sauron and his doings. He's a fascinating character, and I don't mean to write him as a man-whore. I think he's just good at using his natural attributes to get where he needs to go. It would be more admirable if he had better intentions and wasn't the evil Dark Lord who kills Celebrimbor, but he's fun to write nevertheless.
Thus my newfound interest. We'll see if it's a one-time thing or if it ends up going further than just this one little glimpse. I think Tar-Míriel's story might be fun and awesome to write. The women of Tolkien need more love.
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