The Last Ringbearer

platinum tiara encrusted with famous Vendotenian emeralds to a Mordorian scimitar that can split stone and then be wrapped around your waist like a belt, from oversized fossilized teeth (supposedly dragon’s and magical) to manuscripts in dead languages. (Consider the popular joke: “Does the Ring of Power really exist? No, else it could have been bought in an Umbar market.”) And how did blood mix here, what fantastic beauties surfaced regularly from this universal melting pot! In any case, on his way from the Fish Market to the Three Stars Embankment Tangorn had counted at least half a dozen such irresistible lovelies.

He stopped by a familiar dugout bar to drink some of his favorite Golden Muscat. Its sweetness and tartness balance each other so perfectly that the taste seems to disappear altogether and the wine turns into materialized aroma, seemingly simple and even somewhat crude, but in reality weaved from a multitude of shades – multiple meanings and hints. Let some of it linger on your tongue, and you will see the topaz berries warm with the afternoon sun, slightly sprinkled with limestone dust, and the blindingly white path through the vineyard, and then the enthralling Umbarian six-line verses – takatos – will begin creating themselves right out of the noon haze…

It’s strange, really, he thought while climbing up the stairs back into the street (another check – still no tail), it’s strange but he used to believe that fully appreciating the taste of this magic drink would lead him to a full understanding of the soul of the city where it was born. Umbar – the wonderful, damned, tender, fickle, mocking, depraved, ever avoiding real intimacy Umbar… A bitch of unbelievable beauty and charm who gave you a love potion to drink, precisely so she could then openly flirt with all and sundry in your full view, leaving you the choice of either killing her or accepting her as she was. He chose the latter, and now, back after a four-year absence, knew with certainty: baron Tangorn’s Gondorian phase was nothing but a prolonged misunderstanding, for his real home is here…

He stopped by the parapet, leaned on the warm pinkish limestone, swept his gaze over the majestic view of both of Umbar’s bays – Kharmian and Barangar – and suddenly realized: this was the very place where he met baron Grager on his first day in Umbar! The resident listened to Tangorn’s introduction and said coldly: “I don’t care for Faramir’s recommendations! Young man, I won’t give you any real work for at least six months. By then you must know the city better than the police, speak both local languages without an accent, and have acquaintances in all strata of society – from criminals to senators. That’s just for starters. If you fail, you can go home and do literary translations, you’re pretty good at it.” Truly everything comes around…

Did he manage to become a local? That doesn’t seem possible… Be that as it may, he learned to write takatos well appreciated by connoisseurs, to understand ship’s rigging, and to easily converse with Kharmian smugglers in their gaudy patois. Even now he can guide a gondola through the maze of Old City canals with his eyes closed; he still remembers a dozen open-ended courtyards and other such places where one can lose a tail even when openly tracked by a large team… He had weaved a pretty decent agent network here, and then he had Alviss – this city held no secrets from her… Or, perhaps, she had him?

Alviss was the most glamorous of the Umbar courtesans. From her Belfalas mother who kept a humble port brothel called The Siren’s Kiss she had inherited sapphire eyes and hair the color of light copper that instantly drove any Southerner crazy; from her father – a corsair skipper who wound up on a yardarm when the girl was barely a year old – a man’s mind, an independent character, and a penchant for well-considered gambles. This combination of qualities enabled her to rise from the port hovels of her birth to her own mansion on Jasper Street, where the cream of the Republic’s elite gathered. Alviss’ outfits regularly caused major indigestion in wives and official mistresses of high officials, and her body was the model for three large canvasses and the cause of a dozen duels. A night with her cost either a fortune or nothing but a trifle like a well-dedicated poem.

That was precisely how it happened with Tangorn, who dropped by her salon once (he had to establish contact with the secretary of the Khand embassy, who was a regular). When the guests started to leave, the beauty confronted the funny northern barbarian and said with indignation belied by sparkles of laughter in her eyes:

“Rumor has it, Baron, that you claimed my hair is dyed!” Tangorn opened his mouth to deny this monstrous lie, but realized immediately that this was not what was expected of him. “I assure you that I’m a natural blond. Would you like to confirm that?”

“What, right now?”

“Sure, when else?” Taking his arm, she marched from the living room to the inner chambers, purring: “Let’s find out if you’re as good in bed as on the dance floor…”

It turned out that he was even better. By morning Alviss had signed an unconditional surrender pact to which she stuck quite well over the years that followed. As for Tangorn, at first it seemed nothing more than an exciting adventure to him; the baron realized that this woman had stealthily taken up more of his heart than he could afford only when she bestowed her characteristically generous attentions on Senator Loano’s young son – an empty-headed pretty boy fond of writing sickeningly sweet verses. The duel that followed made the whole city laugh (the baron inflicted blows with the flat of his sword, using it as a club, so the youngster got away with only a set of mighty bruises and a concussion), made Grager furious, and totally confused the Umbarian secret service: a spy has no right to behave thusly! Tangorn took the drubbing from the chief indifferently and asked only to be reassigned away from Umbar – to Khand, say.

Somehow he had no consistent memories of the year he spent in Khand: only the sun- bleached adobe walls, windowless like the forever veiled faces of the local women; the smell of overheated cotton oil, the taste of bland flatbreads (the moment they cool they resemble mortar in both taste and texture), and the incessant whine of the zurna over it all, like the maddening buzz of a giant mosquito. The baron tried forgetting Alviss by losing himself in work – he found out that the syrupy caresses of the local beauties could not do that. Strangely, he did not connect Grager’s sudden order to return to Umbar to his reports. However, it turned out that one of the ideas he mentioned in passing (analyzing the real trade volume between Mordor and the other countries beyond Anduin) had seemed so fruitful to Grager that the latter decided to pursue it himself right there, in Khand. To Tangorn’s total amazement Grager appointed him chief of station in Umbar: “Sorry, but there’s no one better; besides, you know the Southern saying: to learn to swim, you gotta swim.”

The very next day a woman wearing an opaque Khand burka found him, gracefully turned up the veil and said with a shy smile that astounded him: “Hello, Tan… You’ll laugh, but I’ve waited for you all this time. I’ll wait more if I have to.”

“Really? You must’ve devoted yourself to serving Valya-Vekte,” he scoffed, trying desperately to surface from those damn sapphire depths.

“Valya-Vekte?”

“If I’m not mistaken, she’s the goddess of virginity in the Aritanian pantheon. The Aritanian temple is only three blocks from your house, so this service won’t be too burdensome…”

“That’s not what I mean,” Alviss shrugged. “Sure, I’ve slept with a bunch of people this past year, but that was just work, nothing else.” Then she looked straight at him and fired a