Chapter Text
The Twenty-Fifth Year of the Fourth Age
Minas Anor
…
The Dwarrowmatron’s scream rent the stillness of the spring morning and sent pigeons flying in panic from the city walls. She held her ring-laden hands before her open mouth in frozen shock, struggling to catch her breath as she fought for the air necessary to call her husband’s name through her horror.
“TULK!” Pulkra cried as she knelt before the open door of a kiln three times as tall as she was herself. She had come to her workshop on a breezy balcony on the sixth circle of Minas Anor before the sun peeked above the mountains. Pulkra had moved South at the urging of her husband ten years ago. Tulk had what Pulkra called a “creativity crisis” after the bombing of the market and had shifted from creating weapons to jewel smithing despite his wife’s stern warning that it had a much less forgiving profit margin.
They had left their daughter Syg to manage the other end of an import company that her grandfather Haru had established. After opening a permanent shop in one of the city’s thriving shopping districts on the second level, the family had done rather well for itself in this city of humans. Pulkra had soon delegated the running of the shop to her cousin Borbo and two hapless humans she had hired. She now spent her free time making a respectable name for herself among the humans as a chemist, a ceramicist, and a business owner.
Pulkra had entered her workshop, black braids coiled safely around her head, eager to check on her latest experiment: heating cobalt ores to different temperatures and using them to glaze the egg-shell fine porcelain which could be found along the banks of the Anduin south of Osgialith. She had managed to get a brilliant rainbow of glazes from a deep, earthy red to a mustard yellow to a blue, the color of the sky before sunrise.
The rank smell filling the workshop might have warned her that something was amiss, but when she had pulled open the ponderous insulated doors and looked inside the kiln, what she saw made her drop the tool she had been holding with a clatter and she fell to her knees upon the flagstones.
“Tulk!” she screamed again, knowing that her voice would carry down to their house on the level below her workshop. She had often scolded him about how taking on apprentices seemed to double the time he took to complete his work. With this particular apprentice, she had not mentioned how her husband and the young Prince Eldarion Telcontar would spend their mornings smoking and drinking coffee and discussing which silver merchant was the most dishonest while the best hours of the day’s labor went wasted.
Today, it was opals; a delivery had just come in that night from Khand by way of Erabor. Each precious gem had its own compartment in a large box lined with red silk which made the glittering stones flash as they reflected in the Jewelsmith’s eyes. When Pulkra had left them, the prince, his cold coffee forgotten and his long legs kicked out awkwardly beneath their Dwarf-sized table, and her husband had both been stooped over their horde while Tulk explained how to grade them and Eldarion arranged gems on top of a sketch of a necklace which he had drawn on a piece of paper.
The two of them came running up to the rooftop workshop a moment after Pulkra screamed. Seeing the prince at a full sprint up the stone stairs, the guard assigned to watch him followed, looking around for any obvious threats.
“What’s wrong?” Tulk asked his wife, jogging past the forge and into her section of the workshop. He stooped with one hand on her shoulder, taking in the look of horror and following her gaze to where Eldarion had stopped in front of the open kiln doors.
“Ai, Eru!” the prince gasped. Lying amongst the shattered pottery, dripping rainbows onto their singed white contours, were the unmistakable shapes of bones. The skull was streaked with dripping glaze as flakes of burned flesh fell away from it.
…
“If we need more space… could we not simply add an additional floor to the existing structure?” Faramir suggested, tilting his head at the map of the city that occupied the center of the council table. It had clearly been altered many times over its life, and the buildings were labeled with varying degrees of legibility.
“Aye,” Gimli eyed the city planner conspiratorially, “My boys can do it, but the structure won’t hold as it is. We’ll need to rebuild from the ground up.”
“And how long will that take?” Faramir frowned.
“Six months,” the dwarf shrugged, “If there’s funding.” He looked pointedly at the king.
“The health of the people is our first priority.” Aragorn assured him, “that’s six months without a public hospital, we will need a temporary solution.”
"And with the festival next month..." Faramir met Aragorn's gaze with a smirk; the king and Queen's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary was to be marked by a celebration of historic merrymaking which could hardly go forward while The Itch held the city under siege.
“Yes, my lord,” Bergil had recently been elevated to the council as minister of planning, a position he took very seriously, “Which is another reason why the appropriation of undesirable properties for…”
“Tearing down the whorehouses to build hospitals won’t stop the Umbrian Itch,” Elrohir said dryly, “they’ll just rut in the fields if we throw them from the city.”
“And would that be so bad?” Lord Melbion, the exchequer of the realm, declared in his booming voice, his eyes flicked to Lord Elphir, who self-consciously stopped himself from scratching.
“Yes,” Elladan was suddenly caustic, “it would be bad since they were not the ones who brought this plague into our city.”
“And where would you put the sick, Peredhel?” Lord Melbion asked, his jowls quivering.
“We don’t even know that it’s a venereal illness.” Elladan tried not to sound condescending, but the man grated on his nerves. His family had been looking after the coffers of Gondor for centuries, and Elladan knew that his favor was politically important.
“Ah, Yes, sir,” Bergil blushed and apparently found something interesting on his clipboard. Aragorn knew he was losing control over the meeting and was relieved when Arwen saved him from trying to reign in his advisors. Theoretically, this meeting had been called to address the sudden influx of patients into the Healing Halls, all exhibiting the same peculiar rash that had earned the name the “Umbarian itch.” However, nobody was sure where it had originated. For most of the patients, it went away in a fortnight, but an increasing number of patients became sicker and sicker, and nothing they had tried would return them to health. The healing halls were filled with the sickest, and for the past fortnight, they had seen no improvement.
“I think the only reasonable solution is a comprehensive education campaign.” Arwen spoke up, “If people know what to look for, they will limit contact.” She folded her hands and looked around at the council. Motherhood had softened her curves, but she was as beautiful as ever with her jewel-adorned plaits hanging down to her lap. This suggestion was met with a chorus of awkward grumbles and nervous laughter from the men around the table. “What?” She scowled at her husband, who had one hand covering his eyes.
“They…” Aragorn pushed himself up on the arms of his chair and re-settled himself, “Men are less practical about such things than elves are.” He squeezed her wrist affectionately.
Arwen rolled her eyes and turned to her eldest brother, “did you not say you were working on a treatment?”
“Yes, actually,” Elladan leaned forward, “Sir Brandybuck’s mycological work has proved very useful. It’s some form of pathogen. I believe we are on the verge of a breakthrough. But….”
“What do you need?” Aragorn asked him.
“Ada!” the doors to the council chamber banged open and the prince entered at a run, he was wearing a jeweler’s loop that made one of his eyes look comically large and skidded to a stop when he saw the king’s council assembled and remembered that the meeting had been scheduled.
“Eldarion?” Aragorn straightened, frowning at his son. Arwen looked disappointed as she folded her arms, taking in his eyewear and the many-pocketed tool belt he wore over tattered black work clothes.
“We found a-a body,” Eldarion said to the suddenly silent council chambers. Dust motes fell through the beams of morning sunlight, and he breathed heavily from his run up the citadel.
“What?” Faramir asked, standing up.
“In…” Eldarion closed his eyes, the image of the charred remains burned into the back of his skull, “in the kiln,” he pointed, and his voice came out trembling. A wave of nausea came over him as his imagination ruthlessly supplied him with the horror of cooking to death amongst the dripping, searing glass.
“He was with Tulk and Pulkra,” Arwen explained. Eldarion heard her stand and walk towards him.
“You found a body in Pulkra’s kiln?” Faramir said, unbelieving. Eldarion went pale and looked like he might be sick. "Who? Who's missing?"
“Lock down the city above the fifth level!” Aragorn was ordering Faramir. Arwen had rushed to her son. “Place checkpoints at the main gates.”
The Steward nodded and began issuing orders to his men at the doors.
Aragorn put his hands on his son’s shoulders and could feel the panicked throb of his pulse in his fingers. “Tell me what happened.” He breathed demonstratively, and Eldarion copied him.
“I Left Holleg,” Eldarion pointed, “With Tulk and Pulkra,” Eldarion put his head on his father’s shoulder, “Someone burned alive in there, Ada. Don’t make me go back there.” He said quietly enough that nobody but his father could hear.
“Secure the scene,” he ordered the Steward, and Faramir saluted crisply before hastening from the council chambers with Gimli, Elladan, and Elrohir behind him. “The rest of you are dismissed.” He ordered the rest of the council before returning to his son and wrapping him in a tight embrace.
“It wasn’t her.” Eldarion said, pulling back after a few deep breaths and looking into his face evenly, “Pulkra was terrified. I’ve only heard screams like that once, Ada.” He looked earnestly at his father, dark memory swimming behind his eyes.
“We will get to the bottom of this,” Aragorn promised his son with a squeeze of his arm.