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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
purposeful_glory
...Loki does not think Sarpalarë is likely to answer that.
To Irissë: Why did you ask me if I can fight a Maia?
To Irissë: Why did you ask me if I can fight a Maia?
purposeful_glory
Well, damn. Do they at least have the courtesy to see out of their eyes and hear out of their ears?
I have no idea. They can see and hear in forms that have neither, but maybe while they're using them they can be deceived by the same things?
purposeful_glory
"I think she's probably sewn up via oath or just a truly impenetrable web of lies to the point where she's not a viable source of information. She wasn't meant to get away clean to begin with."
purposeful_glory
"I commented 'suicide mission', Tyelcormo said 'it would have been' - but she didn't tell them anything besides her stupid, rehearsed story even when they took her alive, didn't tell me anything other than that, repeated it with a straight face all through today, I don't think she can tell you anything else."
"I would like to think that even if I have subjects who'd obey me if I asked them to kill my brother I have none who'd obey me if I asked them to swear to it."
purposeful_glory
"Maybe the infiltrator wasn't pretending to be working for you. Maybe they drew on a personal connection of some kind, would she be an easy target that way?"
"They would have studied archery together," Irissë says, "if she was good enough to make that shot at all. There's only one advanced women's program with Oromë a century - I wasn't in it, there wasn't anything they could teach me - and anyone'd believe it if she said she wanted Fëanáro dead."
"I spoke to her the first night," Nolofinwë says, "and she swore that to her knowledge they hadn't spoken in the last several months. Which settled it. Obviously. But -"
"I spoke to her the first night," Nolofinwë says, "and she swore that to her knowledge they hadn't spoken in the last several months. Which settled it. Obviously. But -"
"Rather complicating matters, yes."
"I'd hoped," Irissë says, "that once she realized there was an imposter trying to destroy us she'd have tried harder to find a way to help."
"I'd hoped," Irissë says, "that once she realized there was an imposter trying to destroy us she'd have tried harder to find a way to help."
"No, not her, our assassin. I haven't told Artanis anything, I was going to tell her to come here but it occurred to me that maybe we don't want everyone important in one building with an enemy in camp."
"If someone impersonated her to get the assassin to do it, they're presumably watching her extra carefully?"