#khamul

On the most important day of his life, Khamûl stood before the door of The Witch King of Angmar's throne chamber. He was about to receive one of the Nine Rings. The Witch King of Angmar was going to make eight other rulers of Men his lieutenants, and Khamûl was the first of the chosen.

The door was an arched maw with spikes pointing from the doorframe towards the center, challenging any foolhardy creature to pass through it unimpaled. Two orcs, the Witch King's attendants, grabbed the Easterling by each arm and led him towards it. One of them pushed Khamûl's head down, none too gently. Khamûl understood it was out of necessity to protect his head from the blades and acquiesced, though the rough shove was a bit unwarranted.

Once they were inside the room, the orc's heavy paw kept pressing his head down towards his chest. All he could see were the stones he was walking on. The orcs jerked him back to an abrupt stop. Khamûl saw a hem of a pitch-black cloak. There was somebody standing before him, dressed all in black, but Khamûl's vision field did not reach the cloak wearer's face. This had to be the Witch King of Angmar, and Khamûl's heart leaped with anticipation of finally getting to see his sovereign.

"Kneel!" the orc said, and another paw, twice as heavy, pushed him down. Khamûl dropped on his knees, hitting them against the stone. Two paws, surprisingly agile for their hulking size, wrapped a blindfold around his head. It was not Khamûl's place to second-guess his sovereign's ways, but he didn't understand why he was treated as a prisoner, instead of the Witch King's right hand that he was about to become.

"Are you ready to receive your ring of fealty, Khamûl?" said a voice. It was reminiscent of an echo in the deepest underground mine.

"There is nothing I desire more dearly, my lord." said Khamûl, figuring that it was the Witch King of Angmar that spoke. "Except… to be permitted to see my lord's glorious face as I swore my fealty to him."

"Oh, you will be," the voice replied with a tinge of a chuckle. Khamûl did not know what was funny about his request, but kept silent.

An orc's paw grabbed his left hand and extended it forward. A ring of metal slipped onto the Easterling's finger, shocking him with cold. The next second it was hot. Then too hot. In no time it was burning his finger. Khamûl gritted his teeth, but the pain grew unbearable.

"Please, my lord, forgive my impudence!" Khamûl whimpered. No doubt this was a punishment for his insolent request. He should have held his tongue.

"There is nothing to forgive," the Witch King's voice responded. For an eyeblink it enveloped Khamûl with a damp chill that quenched the pain a tiny bit. "You did not offend. Your induction into The Nine is proceeding as it should. It has to take as long as it has to."

"Please… please, my lord, make it stop," Khamûl moaned, not trying to make any sense anymore, mind melting in agony.

"You wanted to see my face, Easterling." The voice swirled around him, icy like a subterranean lake, slippery like the blind fish that swam in it. Wherever it brushed past Khamûl's senses, it dulled his pain just enough for him to understand the words. "Did you know you could not see me with a Man's eyes? What you need for gazing into the Unseen World, where I dwell, is no ordinary eye. Think: what is an eye if not a circle? And what is a circle if not a ring?"

Khamul did not try to comprehend this. Flames filled his vision now; the whole world was on fire; he screamed and screamed with no concern for dignity.

"When your ordinary eyesight burns out, your Ring eye will open," the voice continued, and Khamul did not understand how he could still hear it over his own shrieking.

Then an odd thing happened. Long ago, as a child, he had noticed that when you splash scalding water on your skin, the burning sensation alternates with ghostly bursts of coldness. Right now, swaths of searing, icy chill wrapped around his finger, where the ring was. They drove out the burning pain. The agony died down, and so did Khamûl's scream in his throat.

The hall fell very quiet. A pair of hands lifted the blindfold from his forehead, but to his horror, the darkness did not lift from his eyes.

"Now we will finally meet," the subterranean voice said. "Meet as two of The Nine, not as men."

A hand took his hand. Their palms pressed together. The ring on Khamûl's finger touched the ring his lord was wearing, metal on metal. Khamûl's horror melted away when he saw a cloaked figure with a haggard face. The face glowed with reflections of distant flames, but its eyesockets were dark and empty.

No, not empty. They were windows to other places. Through them Khamûl got a glimpse of vast distant expanses, dizzying spikes piercing the sky, fell beasts circling them; one day he was going to ride a beast like that, above the concerns of the mortal world. He knew it now. And he knew that he was visible to his lord in the same way as his lord to him: the true way. Not through the eyes. Just as his sovereign's ring was his true eye, so was Khamûl's.