The Tombs
By Angmar
The body of Zimra rested in the tomb built by Aldarion in the Silent Street, but the tomb keepers said that her spirit was often absent. The position of tomb keeper was not an enviable one, but those entrusted with the duties held it to be their solemn honor to keep all intruders away. Never had they expected that they ever would be guarding a tomb where there was more passage from the inside than there was from the outside.
The guards would discuss the matter only with those closest and most trusted and when they did, their tones were low and guarded, as though merely by the thought of them, this could somehow conjure up the vision of the sights they had beheld. They said that on some nights, right at the exact moment that she had died, strangled by her handmaiden Zaminbalak because the potion that her lord Aldarion prepared to poison her slowly had not worked quickly enough, they would see a strange, eerie greenish light, seeping around the cracks of the door to her tomb, and an icy chill of fear and dread would come upon them. The guard said that a vapor would then materailize into the greenish glowing figure of a woman, which floated just above the ground and headed always in the direction of the king's palace.
Some of the servants of the palace, a few of the hardy, those who had dared to stroll in the king's gardens by night, had seen her on the balcony and the form of the king standing near her. Those who overcame terror briefly by a moment of courage had watched for a while before turning heel and fleeing. Those said that they could hear the king chanting, and then he would suddenly vanish and the phantasmagoric form of the woman would then slowly break apart and blow away in a strong wind and be seen no more that night
With doors locked, Aldarion stood in his secret chamber, deep in concentration. He had just consulted his vast library of parchment srolls of arcane knowledge. Once again he had pushed them aside as being worthless and inaffective in a matter such as this. "They are filled with nothing but magician's tricks!" he had said in disgust. A spell to drive the restless fëa of his wife to the halls of Mandos would have to be of his own doing. Cheated of the long life promised to those of Numenorean blood by the Valar, Zimra had tarried too long before taking her inevitable journey to Mandos, and sought vengance with the living.
Deep in concentration, his forehead beaded with sweat, Aldarion stood and clutched his Ring in his hand until his knuckles turned white. He felt the might that the Ring gave him as he felt the great power of it flowing into him. Day by day, his strength and power grew, and tonight he felt that he had unleashed new dimensions of such magnitude of potency within himself that he never dreamed possible beneath the power of a maia. He laughed at himself for having thought he was too weak to drive away the fëa of a frail woman.
He knew he was ready now. He went to the door of his chambers, drew out a key from his cloak, unlocked the door, opened it, went out, closing it and locking it behind him. He put on an outer cloak of darkest black, went to his door, and summoned two servants. Soon they were on the Silent Street, the path being illuminated by the flames of the torches that died down and then rose up again with the wind that blew from the west. He passed into the tomb alone and ordered the torch bearers to stand by the door, for he needed no light to find his way.
The torch bearers at the door thought they heard his voice chanting a low, soft chant, and then the sound of a woman's wail, fading and dying away. No one ever knew what happened that night in the tomb, but glad indeed were the tomb keepers that they never saw the green vapor creep around the door again.