Sauron's Worst Nightmare by Uvatha the Horseman

Melkor’s Cell

Melkor’s Cell

The Prison Fortress of Mandos, Date Unknown

Sauron opened his eyes. He found himself lying on a narrow bed in a windowless stone room, with absolutely no idea how he had gotten there.

The room was long and narrow, divided in half by an iron grating. The grating was pierced by a small hatch about a foot above the floor. A person could get through it on hands and knees with difficulty, if they took their time. The cover over the grating hatch was locked.

On the far end of the room, on the other side of the grating, there was a heavy door made of iron with a spy hole at eye level. The spy hole had iron bars and was covered by a sliding metal plate, so no light entered the cell from outside. It was a prison door, locked on the outside, and he was on the inside, and on the inside of the grating. He was a prisoner.

He sat up. He was wearing the clothes he’d had on when he was captured. They were muddy and ragged, and there were burrs in his hair. He must have been fleeing, evading capture, abandoning his familiar territories, seeking safety in the wild places. Obviously it hadn’t worked.

Sauron studied the opposite wall. There was a pass-through built into the grating, a narrow slit to allow a food tray to be passed into the inner cell. Next to the pass-through, a water pitcher sat on the floor under a spigot. He tried the spigot and watched water running across the floor to a drain hole in the floor a few feet away. More disturbing was a row of three iron rings in the wall, shoulder high. Each had a corresponding ring recessed into a shallow depression in the floor.

Sauron guessed he was in Melkor’s old cell, in the sub-basements of the Prison Fortress of Mandos. Melkor never spoke of his time in the cell where he lay chained for three long ages, so Sauron didn’t know what it was like. But he believed he was in it. He sensed the strength of spells laid around it, enchantments that sealed the cell far more effectively than iron and stone. This was not an ordinary cell. None could escape.

He tried shape-shifting into something small enough to get through the grating. Nothing happened. The enchantments on the cell prevented it.

In Melkor’s day, the only furnishings in the cell were the rings in the walls and floor the held his chains. Melkor’s bed was the cold stone floor, his blankets were the rags he wore, and his plate and fork were his hands, to the limited extent he could use them. The privy was a hole in the floor. He was left in darkness most of the time.

The cell had been made more comfortable since then. In addition to the bed, there was a table and chair, and in the far corner, a bucket with a lid. The table was set with a dinner tray and cup. It also held some books, writing paper, quills, and ink. A pair of lamps at the far end of the room, flanking the wooden door, cast a warm flickering light. There were no lamps inside the grating, so the shadows were deeper at his end of the room, but there was still enough light to read by.

Sauron didn’t think he was being punished, although he wondered why not. The cell was furnished, and the food seemed to be the same as the guards had themselves. Normally the best you could say about prison food was it was calories, and usually not enough. He thought perhaps he was being constrained while something else important happened. Something important enough that someone wanted him kept out of the way. He couldn’t imagine what it might be, and wished he had someone to ask.

A guard, one of Námo’s people, brought him meals at regular intervals. The routine never varied. The cover plate over the spy hole slid back, and after a moment, the outer door was unlocked from the outside and the guard walked in with a tray. The door swung shut by itself and locked with a click. There was no keyhole on the inside of the door. The guard had to be let out by an unseen guard in the corridor who continued to watch the room through the spy hole as long as the first guard was inside. The guard approached the grating, but stopped when he reached a line on the floor arm’s reach away from it. He put the tray on the floor and slid it towards the pass-through. In all the time Sauron had been confined in the cell, the guard had never crossed the line, nor had the grating door been opened.

The cell had been built to hold an extraordinarily dangerous prisoner, Melkor, the most dangerous being in Ea. Every possible measure, from the fastness of the cell to the caution practiced by the guards, was taken to prevent the prisoner from escaping or from attacking his guards. Sauron thought, “I’m dangerous, but I’m not that dangerous.” He didn’t think even Melkor was that dangerous.