Tolkien Fan Fiction
| 13 |
| Beyond the Quays of Umbar |
Armenelos again! The problem of unintended consequences. Religious prejudice may not *need* an excuse to rear its ugly head, but it will certainly take any one that's handed to it... |
| The shipyard fires had barely cooled when the rumors began: Hurrhabi could not have been breached without help. The look-outs must have been paid off. Someone must have helped the tarkili. Old slanders revived – the a-lehani knew them well, and feared. As ugly rumors spread, and the Khan's Children shunned them in market, muttering darkly against heretics who usurped the khan's place, forsaking their fathers for foreign prophets, many left the city. “Where will you go?” their neighbors asked. “North,” they answered; “'Tis but justice. If for the tarkili we are hunted, then let them shelter us!” |