Beneath him, the fell beast burbled, reminding him of its presence. The great creature stretched out its neck, its maw gaping open as a mighty belch rumbled forth from deep in the pit of its stomach. A fetid stench was left behind as it closed its mouth and hiccupped twice. Coiling its head around like a snake, it placidly stared back at him, its beady eyes unblinking. The wraith patted the creature upon its scaly head and idly noted that the beast had breakfasted upon decaying man flesh.

Gathering up the reins, Angmar tapped the beast's flanks lightly with his spurs, and with an unspoken command, sent it flapping skyward. He must think - in private. Taking the Ring off his finger, he severed the link with his Master, but he knew that if Sauron compelled him to return the Ring to his hand, he would have no choice. He cursed himself for not removing the Ring when he was making love to the Rohirric peasant woman. Why had he made such a careless mistake? Or... had it been a mistake? Magic Rings had a way of finding themselves upon one's finger at the most inopportune of times. Perhaps it was Sauron's will that Angmar wear his Ring so that He might observe the wraith from afar and determine if he was attending to his duties?

Or, for that matter, the Dark Lord could have planted a seed of lust in the Witch-king's mind to test whether his devotion to the war outweighed his love for a pretty face. If that had been the case, the Witch-king had failed the test miserably, walking blindly into the trap laid by his Master. An uncomfortable thought then slithered through the Witch-king's mind like a slime-drenched worm: what if the peasant woman had never existed, and the whole encounter had been a hallucination fabricated by the Dark Lord? For when one wore a Ring of Power, he walked in the world between the worlds and beheld a realm which was denied unto mortals, but all too often his sight was limited to the visions which the Lord of the Rings wished for him to see. Ever the puppet master, Sauron took great delight in playing games of the mind, and the Witch-king had been His opponent for over four thousand years.

For the sake of his own sanity, the Witch-king chose to believe that the woman had been real and he had spent Midsummer Eve in her tender embrace. Delusional though it might be, it gave him a sense of control over his own destiny if he pretended that every vision that his eyes beheld was based upon reality and that the Dark Lord had no power over his perceptions. True it was that it was no difficult task for Sauron to command his will and force him to become a creature he despised, but it made slavery far more tolerable for the Witch-king if he imagined that his mind was still free.

Angmar had been left shaken to his core by the Dark Lord's angry, tear-filled tirade. If the lonely farmer's wife had indeed been real, was her life now in danger because of him? The liaison, brief though it had been, had enraged the Dark Lord. Would Sauron, in a fit of unreasoning wrath, order the execution of this poor peasant woman? Perhaps as punishment, the Witch-king would be commanded to murder her himself and watch in horror and guilt as the expression of confused betrayal faded from her dying eyes. Disciplining the Númenórean had always been a challenge for Sauron, for the ancient prince possessed a will as strong as iron and an incredible tolerance for pain. His mortal companions, however, were another matter entirely. Hurting them was the only way to bring pain to the Witch-king, to break his indomitable spirit and inflict agony upon his heart and soul.

Of all the Nazgûl, the Witch-king always bore the greatest measure of the Dark Lord's wrath... and, paradoxically, the greatest measure of His love. The Númenórean prince had always been Sauron's favorite, His beloved foster son, the apple of the Great Eye. Power, prestige, and great favor had He bestowed upon the Númenórean, and many boons did He give and promises He did make. But when Númenor sank beneath the waves, the Nazgûl turned against his Master, for it had been Sauron's foolish scheming that had been the undoing of his people. Though the Witch-king could never sever the bonds of his servitude to Sauron, ever and anon did he seek surreptitious ways to defy his Master out of spite. And thus where there had once been love and loyalty now was only enmity and resentment. Though Sauron had endured the agony and heartbreak of His servant's rejection for thousands of years, still He refused to give up hope that the Númenórean prince might one day return His pure and tender affections. And so, with all the resolve in His black heart, the Dark Lord determined to make the Witch-king love him, if not out of free will, then with cold, brutal force.

The Witch-king always remembered the incidents of brutality and force far more than he did any of the favors or rewards granted upon him by his dangerously capricious Master. Memories of torture and friends and lovers executed before his eyes haunted his nightmares, the few times he allowed himself the luxury of sleeping...

Seventy-seven years before, Sauron had ordered the murder of every member of the Witch-king's household, from the highest courtier to the lowliest stable boy. Their screams still could be heard upon quiet days and the darkest nights, an echo trapped in time, branded into the fabric of Arda. The enchantments which had been woven over the Morgul Vale mitigated the passage of time, but they also preserved impressions of the past, memories of blood and death and great suffering. A traveler journeying through the vale might wake up in the night to the screams of dying men all around him; yet a terrified glance at his surroundings revealed that he was alone. While the Witch-king usually enjoyed the company of ghosts, these echoes of the past tormented him with guilt, for they took him back to those dark days when he thought he could vie against Sauron and win. So many people had died because of his pride, good men and women who served him out of love and loyalty. As their king, he had failed them all. Deep in his heart he felt that he had as much of a part in their deaths as did Sauron. After all, it was his defiance that had started the war...

After being driven from Dol Guldur, the Dark Lord returned to His ancient home in Mordor. He had regained much of His strength and the ability to assume a corporal form, and even though He had been forced to relinquish His fortress in Mirkwood, He was filled with a newfound confidence and a grand scheme to dominate all of Middle-earth. At that time the One Ring remained lost, but there were other methods of obtaining power: by wielding the Nine Rings of Men and the Seven Rings of the Dwarves. However, this would prove a greater challenge than Sauron had first anticipated. Having possessed their Rings for thousands of years, the Nazgûl were loath to give up their magical bejeweled bands, and the Witch-king led his fellows in a rebellion against Sauron. It was a lost cause and doomed from the start, for the wraiths could never hope to defeat their Master in a show of might and sorcery. And so the war was lost, and one by one the Nazgûl were forced to relinquish their Rings and submit once again to thralldom under the Dark Lord. As punishment for not surrendering their Rings willingly, the Witch-king and his fellows were forced to watch as the members of their households were murdered one by one.

The Morgul Lord remembered that black day as clearly as if it were yesterday. All of his servants were killed – the soldiers who were loyal to him, both man and orc alike; the stewards, advisors and chancellors who assisted him in ruling the kingdom; the clerks, treasurers and chroniclers who tended to the official records; the squires who assisted him in donning his robes of state and his battle armor; the chief cook and his staff of scullions; the cupbearers who brought him his wine and served him his dinners; the grooms that tended to the horses in the stables; the royal beekeeper who harvested the honey from the hives of the black-and-silver Morgul bees; the vintners and vignerons whose labors helped produce the famed Morgul Wine and other brews unique to the tiny kingdom; the musicians who entertained him with song and filled his hall with music; the bards who recounted days of yore in ancient lays and epic poems; the storytellers who helped him pass the long days of immortality with stories both long and short; the jesters who amused him with their ridiculous antics; the maidens who danced before him in diaphanous silks and fluttering veils; and the rest of the many servants who ensured that life in Minas Morgul ran smoothly and efficiently. Though he had not known many of them personally, the Morgul Lord grieved for all of them. It was his responsibility as king to protect the citizens of his kingdom, and he had failed.

Still, though, the sadness and the regret he felt over their deaths did not compare to the grief he felt for his own family, who suffered greatly at the hands of Sauron's torturers before the stroke of the executioner's blade finally granted them the mercy of death. Bound by invisible chains of sorcery, the Witch-king was forced to stand there like Túrin Turambar before the gate of Nargothrond and watch helplessly as his wives, lovers, sons and daughters were beaten, tortured and mutilated. He could still remember the desperation in their pleading eyes and their expressions of horrified betrayal when he did not lift a hand to save them. The chains of sorcery that had paralyzed his body had rendered him mute, so he could neither offer them comfort nor bid them farewell in their dying moments. Yes, Gorthaur the Cruel indeed knew how to inflict pain.

For seventy-seven years, the Lord of Minas Morgul had denied himself the companionship of lovers and friends, remaining aloof and distant from his servants. Eschewing the company of mortals, he often wiled away his days in solitude, haunted by the many ghosts of his past. Sometimes he worried he was turning into Skri the Eighth Nazgûl, who suffered from such severe bouts of melancholy that he was often rendered immobile for weeks at a time. The Witch-king could not bear the agony of another horrific loss, and so he built up stone walls around his heart and fortified the gates. He avoided lasting entanglements and formal unions, preferring instead trysts and transient affairs. These brief liaisons allowed him to experience for a time the tender affections of a lover without the fear of incurring his Master's wrath. Though he left many a fair maid in tears, a broken heart was far better than a heart pierced by the sword.

As the beast's great wings rhythmically beat up and down, lifting its massive body to soar on the air currents and then to sweep across the battle-ravished landscape of the Westfold, Angmar turned his mind away from thoughts of the past. He must concentrate upon the present and the war that he was losing. Perhaps once that wretched business was over, he could finally enjoy all the pleasures of home and hearth once again.