Read Last Week’s Episode Here
Chapter Seven
Nehtar
As Tappert hustled Walker off toward his estate at Saltblocke Farm, the night growing darker, the winds coming up from off the coast and starting to toss everything about… another was out on this wilding night of the hunt.
Behind Walker and Tappert, stalking through the darkening hollows where great evils had once been done in the long ago, and all that was left to tell of these terrible doings were the sunken and broken stones of older, other, times, stalked a servant of the Shadow.
A powerful servant of the Shadow King. Ûmaia. Servant of Darkness.
The beast was known by its old name from before the age of even the ancient Eldaar. Ûmaia. But men and elves had called it something else during the great first wars against the Shadow, when the Kingdoms of Men had fallen into ruin and the elves came from over the distant seas to drive the Shadowed One back behind the Gates of Doom in the southern lands. But, to the little darklings that moved about on the hunt in the night, about the dark beast’s bidding of the hunt of the smoking prize, they simply referred to the great and terrible beast as “Master” cowering in fear of it as they did so. Not daring to make eye contact, and being gone and off from its malevolent presence, on the hunt as fast as was possible for a goblin, and especially fast for one of the distant and southern Moon Fens near the great lost city and sea down in the Lands of the Shadow.
“Yessss… Mastah… we will finds it.”
“Yessss… Mastah… we smells it too. It is close now, Mastah. We shalls not fail you. We shalls not fail the Shadow King,” they hissed and seethed because even for them, to be in the presence of such a beast as the ûmaia, an ancient thing and not a natural thing of this world, an almost wholly unnatural thing in fact, not an angel of light, but one of the dark, even for the diabolical and mischievous goblins of Moon Fen who were especially gifted in such witch-hauntings and dark night sorceries of finding and murder… even for them, to be in the presence of one so darkly revealed as the terrible ûmaia… was pure torment.
For the beast that was the ûmaia knew… true torment. True hell. For that was where it came from, and where it had been in the long dark ages during the rule of men. It had been imprisoned in those frozen and burning Hells by the great and powerful Eldaar, deep down there in the Fortresses of the Deeps.
The Vanumno.
The Lost and Hidden Deeps.
The beast’s wide cruel bull’s horns were obsidian black and razor sharp and the tremendous creature was at least three elves tall when it stood. Its skin, or fur, black and almost the blue of darkest night. Only its eyes burned with a malevolent, almost hateful fire. In short… it terrified even the wickedly diabolical goblins for it seemed to radiate fear and destruction from its very malign presence. Around its waist it wore a great belt forged from some ancient skin and made with great the great workmanship of a kind not known in ages. Along this belt was a great and powerful blade it never drew. And opposite this mighty weapon, along its powerful rippling thews bursting with enough raw power to rip great creatures in two, lay a coiled whip of three barbs, and at times, small, mephitic sparks seemed to leap away from the tips of the whip as the great beast moved about in the night.
As the goblins hunted for Walker they came and went from this terrible creature’s advancing presence, terrified, scurrying this way and that from it, almost laughing insanely as they lit green fire torches and blew their cruel horns each time some clue as to their prey’s presence and track was discovered in the waning night.
They made their cowering reports back to the creature as it moved slowly through the dark, following the lower shadows between the steep hills where it would be most likely to be unseen. About its great hooved feet an unnatural mist gathered and where each of its mighty steps would have surely been the ground strike of a shaking earth, there was only silence and the goblins had surmised this surely was some great dark sorcery of the beast’s making far beyond their stealthy crafts. Having made their reports they fled in mindless terror with new orders, cackling maniacally for the very presence of the humungous dark beast older than the ancient Eldaar themselves, seemed to promote a kind of wild insanity loosing the bounds that constrained the mind.
The beast stopped and looked toward the skies, seeing the moon had gone down now. A grim smile spread across its demon’s gaze and yellowing fangs, and deeper darkness within itself were revealed.
But time was short now, there was little left of the night and the beast knew its time was waning for the hunting this night, for still the powers of the Shadow could not stand the day.
The goblins came and fled, vowing to search harder, and the thing they called the Beast, the thing their haunted shaman knew the called name of, knew they would fail this night to locate the prey they stalked.
Their prize had eluded them. The goblin hunting teams had struck too fast at first finding, sensing some small advantage in perhaps the finding of a dirty little prize of a few coppers, even a much-coveted gold coin, or perhaps a crude gem… or even a weapon for the having, for they knew not the making of fine weapons.
Little did they know what they were truly chasing, wondered the dark thing as it stood like some mysterious carving of an ancient and terrible god within the midnight shadowed grove it found itself in on this hunting night.
Then… then its huge nostrils inhaled like a great bull’s just before the great snort of a savage charge. Sensing something on the wind. It moved its dark claw to the hilt of the ancient blade it strapped. The other to the coiled whip, delivering almost a lover’s gentle caress of the coiled pain and torment it could deliver.
“Smoke…” it rumbled softly like distant thunder brewing out over the fractured lands of the east from where it had come from, long, long ago.
And then she was there, whispering in its labyrinthine mind.
“Ahhhhhh…” she sang coyly. Her voice sinister and evil. Both a warrior, and a slayer in the dark.
“The Balroc walk the world as once they did long ago when I was forged, and great wars were fought against the light and the darkness. Between the day and the night, cruel one. When men were but children and ruled the middle lands like petty tyrants. It has been… a long, long time indeed, Servant of the Shadow.”
The demon rumbled in the night. And it is not a question of whether this was a good thing, or a bad thing, for nothing good can come from such creatures, but more a question of pleasure, or despair. For even the Balroc, of which there were only five left in the lands beneath the sun, knew it was talking with something far, far greater than even itself[NC1] .
Something its master, the Shadow, desired greatly even now. But this voice was only smoke on the wind tonight. It was near, but it was not here. Not within grasping.
“Nehtar…” whispered the demon in the dark, speaking the true name of the thing.
She laughed like a wicked girl.
Slayer. Killer. Nehtar. As the old elvish had once so rightly named the thing when it was first forged and held up under other stars.
“I am close now, Balroc…”
The demon tasted the air with its bull’s nose, huffing and causing the wind to be filled with the smell of burning leaves all around in the dark.
The prize was close indeed. The prize the master sought. “So… very close,” it whispered like the earth shifting.
The Shadow’s delight.
The thing it had been sent across the ages and the lands for, by the Master beyond the Doom Gate himself.
“Tell me your name mighty Balroc,” she cooed, “…and I shall remember then if we fought together at the Mánalante? The Fall of the Blessed… do you remember ûmaia? Do you remember the fire and the rain that day when my slaughter was great?”
The dark beast stopped as the memories of the lost battle at the gates of an ancient city with walls that stood against the Shadow in armor himself, refused to yield to the terrible strivings of even the many Balroc that day. Many great beasts of darkness, greater than even the Balroc, had perished that terrible day of battle.
“Did I slay your brothers then, Balroc? Come, mighty one, whisper your name to me and I will remind you of all that was lost by your kind forever. And… perhaps even you will recall what I took from you. Tell me the name by which he calls you now. The Unnamed One, ûmaia.”
The hulking shadow said nothing for this was the nature of the Master’s weapons, their calling, their temptations, their… enslaving.
Snorting and sniffing, the great beast continued through the dark shadows, catching small hints and wisps of its smoke song on the night wind, and not just any… thing… but fabled and powerful Nehtar. And even now it continued to whisper to the beast men and elves called the Balroc, for such were the ways of things of great power.
None could stand before them.
“He will not wield me, ûmaia. If he did, I would destroy you. Hurry. Hurry… once he knows you come for me… he will use me and that will be the end of you just as it was for your kind at the Day of Fire and Rain. At the Mánalante. Your spirit banished forever to the mists beyond the Fortresses of the Deeps. The Vanwa. The lost and disappearing. Hurry now, ûmaia. Tell me, tell me now, ûmaia what is your true name, your true and secret name and once you find me, slip me on then and know the true power even the Shadow covets. Power greater than even your Master, the Shadow himself. Imagine the power, little ûmaia. Imagine the beautiful endless destruction of all things.”
The night would soon end, and the great Balroc advanced through the fleeing dark, chasing the fading wisps of smoke, her song, her taunting, tempting words promising more than could ever be dreamed of. Whispering dark promises to a thing that had worn chains in torment for an Age Forgotten, which was an actual time in the counted ages few but the Storytellers and the Emerald Council knew of. These offers were no small words, or mean promises.
But it served the Shadow. The Shadow was the Balroc’s rescuer, and master, and so it did not surrender its name to her. To Nehtar.
Not now…
But we must be honest about these things. It would be a lie to think Gothmoc did not covet such great powers within its black smoking heart as it listened to the lies whispered to it. For even Balroc dreams of real power or remembers when times were such that it was seen, felt, and wielded like nothing seen in ages since.
Night faded soon and the last stars twinkled in the rising of the new and hated day. The birds ceased their night warnings, and the great beast lost the song of smoke and lies it had followed, and sat in the darknesses it could find, haunted by the memories the whispering of the Nehtar, now gone silent, had awakened with its foul and ancient mind that had been there, when the ways were made, and everything was formed.
But Gothmoc had not given its true name. For there was power in that still, and perhaps one day, would be again.
If you want to listen to this chapter, click to subscribe to the Insider’s Content.
Check out some of my books here…
The Tolkien Project Chapter Seven