Кирилл Еськов: The Last Ringbearer

The most recent attempt at a solution had been undertaken by the smart guys at the Arnor Center for High Technologies with a special grant from Angmar Aerospace. It all came to naught: the grantor was presented with a plate of some alloy two millimeters thick (86.12% silver, 11.96% nickel, and so forth) and told that this was real mithril and everything else was just legends. As usual, the smart guys then asked for another grant to study this creation of theirs. Without blinking an eye the boss of the rocket men produced a loaded museum crossbow from under his executive desk, aimed it at the project leader and suggested that he protect himself with his plate – if it holds, you’ll get your money, if it doesn’t, you won’t need it. Unsurprisingly, that was the end of the project. I have no idea whether this actually happened, but those who know the CEO of Angmar Aerospace well insist that the joke would be quite in his taste – not for naught does he trace his lineage from the Witch-king.

The story of inoceramium that supposedly served to make the rings of the Nazgúl is much simpler, and the reason people don’t often see it is obvious. This metal of the platinum group is not just extremely rare in Arda’s crust (its clark is 4 x 108; compare gold at 5 x 1077 or iridium at 1 x 107) – unlike the other platinoids it is never found scattered, but only in large nuggets. You can figure out the probability of finding one such yourself. Actually, not too long ago a nugget weighing a fantastic 87 ounces had been found in Kigvali mines in South Harad; the headline in the local paper was Find of the Century – Six Pounds of Inoceramium Would Make Enough Rings for a Platoon of Nazgúl . This metal has absolutely no unusual characteristics aside from its density (higher than osmium).

But enough about metals.

Alviss never married. She dwelt in self-imposed isolation in her Jasper Street mansion, dedicating her life to raising the son she had at the appropriate time after those events. This boy grew up to be none other than Commodore Amengo – the one whose voyages are universally considered to have ushered in the era of great discoveries. The Commodore had left behind the maps of the shore of a new continent that was to bear his name, wonderful (in a literary sense) travel notes, and a long string of broken hearts – none of which brought him any family happiness. Aside from the great western continent (which was long believed to be the legendary Far West, with resultant attempts to discern Elvish features in its aborigines), Amengo’s list of discoveries includes a small tropical archipelago which he had deservedly named Paradise. The name had been replaced later by the Holy Church (the local girls looked like the living, breathing houranies as portrayed by the godawful Hakimian heresy), but the two biggest islands of the archipelago, whose shapes closely resemble the yin-yang symbol, have managed to keep the names given them by the discoverer: Alviss and Tangorn.

By my lights the famous seafarer had immortalized his parents’ names in the best possible way. Nevertheless, the love story of the Umbarian courtesan and the Gondorian aristocrat had been a favorite topic of writers ever since. For some reason these people either turn the protagonists into disembodied romantic ghosts or reduce everything to primitive erotica. Alas, the recent Amengian screen version – The Spy and The Whore – was no exception: it was rightfully rated XXX in Gondorian theaters and banned outright in puritanical Angmar. The movie’s artistic merits are scant, but it’s totally politically correct: Alviss is black (excuse me – Harado-Amengian) and the relationship between Tangorn and Grager has distinct gay overtones. The critics predicted as one man that the judges of the Silver Harbors Film Festival would protect themselves from the charges of racism, sexism, and other horrible “isms” by throwing every conceivable award at it, which is exactly what happened. In any event, the inimitable Gunun-Tua’s Golden Elanor for Best Actress was well-deserved.

Almandin and Jacuzzi were hanged in the courtyard of the Ar-Horan prison on one of the exhaustingly hot August nights of 3019; Flag Captain Makarioni and seven other officers that had participated in ‘Admiral Carnero’s mutiny’ were executed along with them. This was the post factum description of Operation Sirocco, during which the admiral first destroyed the entire Gondorian invasion fleet right at the piers in a pre-emptive strike, and then landed a raiding party which burned Pelargir shipyards to the ground. To save face, Aragorn had to sign the Dol Amroth Compact. By its terms Umbar did acknowledge itself “an inseparable part of the Reunited Kingdom,” but got itself permanent free city status in return. Its Senate was renamed to ‘magistrate’ and its army to ‘garrison;’ Special Envoy Alkabir, who represented the Republic, even managed to wangle a special provision banning His Majesty’s Secret Guard from operating in its territory. To the mutual satisfaction of the king of Gondor and Umbarian senators, Admiral Carnero’s raid was declared to have been a banal pirate foray, and its participants deserters and traitors who had abandoned their oath and military honor.

Of course, the people viewed Carnero’s co-conspirators (the admiral avoided court-martial by getting himself killed at Pelargir) as heroes who had saved their Motherland from a foreign invasion, but the fact remained that they had gone against orders. The Republic’s Prosecutor General Almaran had a simple solution to this ethical dilemma: “Winners are always right, you say? Like hell! Either law exists and is the same for everybody, or there’s no law at all.” The pathos of his prosecutor’s speech (quoted in whole or in part in every modern law textbook) can be summed up exhaustively by its concluding statement: “Let the world perish but justice be done!” Be that as it may, the executed officials of the Umbarian secret service should have known that motherland’s gratitude usually takes strange forms… Sonya never found out about Haladdin’s mission (as we already know, this had been his special concern) and remained certain that he and Kumai had perished at the Field of Pelennor. But time is merciful, so once those wounds had healed she fulfilled her life’s destiny by becoming a loving wife and wonderful mother, having married a worthy man whose name is absolutely irrelevant to our story.

In my opinion, royal personages are of much lesser interest, since their fates are well-known. For those too lazy to pick up a book or at least review their sixth-grade history textbook, let me remind you that Aragorn’s reign was one of the most magnificent in Middle Earth history and is one of the watershed events separating the Middle Ages (the Third Age) from modernity. The usurper did not try to win the love of the Gondorian aristocracy (such a project would have been dead on arrival), instead betting correctly on the third estate, which cared for things like tax rates and safety of trade routes, rather than dynastic rights and other such phantoms. Since His Majesty had effectively burned all bridges with the aristocracy, paradoxically this gave him freedom to implement radical agrarian reform, drastically curtailing the rights of landlords in favor of free farmers. These factors were the basis for the famous ‘Gondorian economic miracle’ and the colonial expansion that followed, while the representative legislative bodies Aragorn had created to counterweight the aristocracy have survived to our day almost unchanged, earning the Reunited Kingdom its well- deserved title of Middle Earth’s oldest democracy.

It is common knowledge that the king advanced and supported science, craftsmanship, and sea-faring ventures, appointed talented men to important state positions without regard to their lineage, and was sincerely loved by his subjects. The only dark stain on Elessar Elfstone’s reputation is the early period of his reign, when his Secret Guard (admittedly a really scary outfit) had to protect the throne from the feudal lords with an iron hand; actually, most of today’s experts believe that the scale of terror had been greatly magnified by the nobility’s historians. Aragorn’s famously beautiful wife Arwen (Elven-born, according to legend) played no role in matters of state and only imparted a certain mysterious luster to his court. They had no children, so the Elfstone dynasty ended with its founder, with the throne reverting to the Prince of Ithilien – in other words, things went back to the way they were.