Tolkien Fan Fiction
| 11 |
| Serpent's Ease (Gríma) |
The Wormtongue's rise and fall... |
| It was easy for a snake to snare a King. Theoden was lonely, and his son too busied with protecting the Mark to comfort his ailing father. The King’s headstrong nephew rode out constantly, forsaking the stale air of Meduseld. Like most unlearned Rohirrim, the King was easy prey to the power of words. The King was amused by his scribe’s clever tales. The scribe then offered to help his Lord read and write letters to Gondor. As easily as a tired warhorse bows its proud head to the rider’s will, the Lord of the Mark was tamed by Gríma‘s soft speech. The cloddish horsemen knew not that the Worm they scorned was in truth a subtle snake, not until it was too late. Gríma the scribe rose to be Theoden’s most trusted counselor and sit by his very throne. Fortune’s stroke and his own left the King and the darkened Hall and its Lady alone, within the serpent’s coils. Another week, a month, and the weakling King would join his dead son, and then none could gainsay Gríma, nor keep him from the prize he coveted above all else, the fair daughter of the House of Eorl. It had been so easy, after all! Then he was flung from the Hall where he had ruled in fact if not name, robbed of his ease and chased from Edoras like a stinking rat, in front of the Lady he had craved. They would all pay for his humiliation, his exile. If he must go forth to his true master and leave his pride in the Golden Hall, he would see it burned to ashes, and the blood of Eorlingas run red from Edoras to Helm’s Deep! Perhaps a serpent cannot truly walk among men. But he can still slay them. |