The Forging of the Ring by Uvatha the Horseman

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March 25 – The Forging (Afternoon)

Sauron completes the Forging, but fears he won't be able to wear the Ring.

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March 25 (Late Afternoon) The Forging

It was time for the next step, binding the others to the One. Mairon didn't know where they were, but it didn't matter. The One would find them.

Mairon knew how to bind the Seven and the Nine; it was he who put the binding mechanism into the structure of the Great Rings. But he didn't know how to bind the Three, or even whether it was possible.

Mairon knew nothing of the Elven Rings. The first he heard of them was that Celebrimbor, working alone, had made three new Great Rings, different from the others, and more powerful than the sixteen that came before.

But Mairon knew Celebrimbor. Celebrimbor was an artist with a soaring vision, but he had little interest in the mundane details of a project. It was likely, when he made his new Rings, that he would reuse the existing infrastructure. It was also likely he would not examine that infrastructure closely enough to notice, in addition to the practical and unexciting devices, the binding mechanism tucked in among them.

If he guessed right, the Three would bind the same as the Seven and the Nine.

He sent the others out of the room. He saw the final steps as something like a sacred ritual, and wanted to conduct them in private. When the others had gone, he brought the Ring to the edge for the final time.

But this time, he didn't plunge the Ring into the magma, or even hold it over it. He wouldn't have been willing to do so anyway; now that so much of his own power was bound up in it; he would rather fall in himself. Instead, he held the Ring in tongs and knelt by the edge of the chasm, with the Ring near, but not over, the boiling magma. When he judged the gold band to be warm enough, he sang the Binding spell over it.

ash nazg durb at ul ûk ash nazg gimb at ul

ash nazg thrak at ul ûk agh burz um ish i krimp at ul

Fiery writing girdled the Ring. He went limp and closed his eyes, then looked again. The words of the Binding spell were engraved on the band, inside and out. He blinked in surprise. He had expected to see the inscription, but he hadn't expected it to be in his own handwriting.

Only one task remained. Like all Great Rings, the Ring had to be claimed. He took a deep breath and prepared himself. The words had to be spoken with absolute conviction.

He put the Ring on his hand and raised it above his head.

"I take this thing for my own, and declare myself the Lord of the Ring."

The Lord of the Ring. Durbgu Nazgshu.

His hand tingled. The feeling ran up his arm and washed over his body. He couldn't breathe.

"... What is? … I can't ... "

He staggered backwards and clutched the edge of the workbench for support. A piece of glassware teetered and crashed to the ground. He heard footsteps running.

"My Lord? What is it, what happened?"

His eyes were closed. He felt weak, completely spent, and at the same time, he felt stronger than he'd ever been before.

"Melkor's chains!" Mairon leaned against the workbench and closed his eyes.

One of his helpers whispered to another, "Looks like someone hit the money note."

As soon as he put on the Ring, he thought he could read the thoughts of the three who wore the Elven Rings. But after just a few minutes, the connection was severed. He never did learn who they were, or where they lived.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Mairon thought he'd need eight or ten hours to complete the forging, and the dry runs confirmed it. But by the time they finished that day, he'd been on his feet for more than twelve hours. He hadn't yet told his helpers whether they'd been successful or not.

"Attention." Mairon said. He kept his face still, revealing nothing.

"Remember this day, because you will tell this story to your grandchildren, and they will tell it to theirs." He looked at them solemnly, and then he grinned.

His people, his apprentices, helpers, and scribes, grinned back. Then they began to applaud and cheer.

"Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!"

They surrounded him then, embracing him and slapping him on the back.

"Hail Zigur, Lord of the Ring, Lord of the Earth." they chanted. He smiled. It sounded good.

They all headed out to the camp, talking and laughing all at once.

After the heat of the forge and the greater heat near the edge, he felt cold as he stepped outside. The temperature dropped after the sun went down. The wind picked up, too. Someone gave him a blanket, and he wrapped it around himself, shivering.

He went to his tent to get dressed. Clean clothes had been laid out for him on his cot, but he was so grimy, he hesitated to put them on. All day, sweat had poured down his sides, mixing with the soot and sulfurous smoke.

There wasn't enough water at the campsite to wash in, but there was a slake barrel near the charcoal forge in the chamber, the one his helpers had forced his arm in earlier today. He made his away among the rocks to the chamber, where he dumped the water used to quench hot metal over his head. He put his clothes on over wet skin and went back outside. The wind was chilly on his wet skin. It felt good to be clean.

He returned to the campsite and found the others sitting around the fire. He sank into a camp stool, feeling sleepy and content. The horses were tied up nearby; one of them stomped and whinnied. The mood around the campfire was festive. Someone passed around a wineskin. Someone else was telling an animated story. Mairon was too tired to talk, but it was pleasant to listen to the others tell the tale of the day's adventures.

The Ring sat on his hand like a living thing. It seemed to contract around his finger as if it were breathing, and sometimes it would sigh. He sensed in it a rudimentary intelligence, less than an animal's but still real, and a will of its own. It was almost frightening to care so much for something outside of himself.

He longed to show the Ring to Aulë. Aulë would mutter a grudging, "Not bad", the highest praise he ever gave, followed by "Would you like to hear how you could have done better?" It was a shame that, on the greatest day of his life as a craftsman, he couldn't tell Aulë about it.

He wondered if the others knew how close he came to disaster today, he hadn't told them. But if they didn't hear him cursing after the first two infusions, they must have noticed after the third, when he collapsed against the wall and wept.

His hand rested in his lap. His eyes kept going back to the band of gold around his finger. It felt heavy on his hand. He admired the way the firelight reflected from its smooth surface.

He wasn't used to wearing it. The tips of his fingers tingled slightly. It must be a sign of the Ring's power. Did it feel like that when he first put it on? He couldn't remember. He rubbed his hand. Maybe it just took getting used to.

Actually, it was more than tingling, it stung. He could feel his pulse in his fingertips. That was odd. He flexed his hand, but couldn't close his fist. The tingling started to feel like bee stings. He wondered what caused it. It couldn't be the Ring, the Ring was a part of him.

Magical objects could burn. He had forgotten that.

It should have been obvious to someone who knew what Silmarils[1] were. Melkor had worn them on an iron band on his brow even though he couldn't touch them. He got burned if he reached for his crown without thinking, but on the whole, it was manageable.

If he reached for his crown without thinking, he burned himself,

Mairon would figure out how to keep the Ring from burning him. He could wear it on a chain around his neck over a heavy shirt, or inside a locket, but he felt the disappointment keenly. He wanted to wear the Ring on his hand, not on a chain.

His whole hand throbbed. He knew he should take off the Ring, but he didn't want to. He set his teeth against the pain and wished he had something to bite.

His Chief Assistant turned to speak to him, but interrupted himself in mid-sentence. He got to his feet and returned with the healer.

"I didn't summon you." said Mairon.

"Well, I'm here anyway. Show me your hand." the healer said, reaching for it.

Mairon yanked it away. He didn't want anyone touching the Ring, or even getting close to it. The intensity of his feelings surprised him.

He touched fingertip to fingertip and transferred the Ring to his left hand without taking it off. He wondered how long it would be before his left hand started to burn, too. He tucked it under his leg to hide it, then offered his injured hand to the healer.

"I put a salve for pain on your hand when you burned it, but that was hours ago. It must be wearing off by now." said the healer.

Oh … right.

He watched as the healer examined his hand. There were blisters wherever he'd been burned, one between his fingers and several on the palm of his hand.

"Do you have more of that salve you gave me earlier?" Mairon asked.

"The numbing agent? Yes." the healer said.

He took out the phial and began painting on the clear liquid that erased pain. Whatever it was, it worked quickly. The pain simply stopped.

The cook was making something in an iron cauldron, and it smelled wonderful. Mairon suddenly realized how hungry he was. This morning, he'd been almost too nervous to eat. And after they'd started, they hadn't taken a break until they were done.

He rested his eyes for a moment. His chin fell forward, startling him awake. When it happened again, he said to the others, "I'm going to lie down for a few minutes. Call me when the food is ready."

He got up. The servant who looked after him followed him to his tent and held the flap open for him. Mairon sat on the edge of his cot, exhausted.

"Lie down, and I'll remove your boots for you." said the servant.

He lay with his eyes closed and his hands resting on his stomach. The fingers of one hand covered the gold band on the other. Hands grasped his ankle and started to ease his boot off. The room was spinning, or else he was falling backwards, he wasn't sure which. Then nothing.

-o-o-o-o-o-

"Lord Zigur." Someone was shaking his shoulder. "Supper's ready, if you want it."

He struggled to wake up. He was still lying on his back with his hands folded over his middle, one hand over the other. The gold band was smooth under his fingertips.

It was darker outside than it'd been when he'd lain down, and colder. Someone must have covered him with a fur rug, but he had no memory of how it got there.

"Give me a few minutes." he said.

"That's what you said this morning. Since then, you haven't stirred. We kept checking on you to make sure you weren't dead."

"Is it morning already?" he asked.

"No, it's evening. You've been asleep since this time yesterday."

-o-o-o-o-

They packed up to leave at first light. Mairon gathered up the long timeline scroll and all of their individual scripts and threw them into the chasm. They were caught in the updraft, and then burst into flame before they reached the magma.

He planned to throw his notebook in after them. He lifted it and picked a spot in the magma to aim for, but he'd worked too hard on those pages of drawings and calculations to do it.

He found the gold-iron ingot, once so precious, lying discarded in a crate with other pieces of scrap. It was gold, but it had no value for jewelry or coins, since the alloy was a dull grey-white. But he didn't want it to fall into the control of another. There were other ringmakers out there who might attempt to make another One.

He drew back his arm and threw it as hard as he could. The ingot sailed over the edge and fell deep into the chasm, where it punched an orange-yellow window in the dross covering the magma. It rested on the surface for a moment, and then it sank and was gone.

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Chapter End Notes

[1] The Great Jewels, which burned any evil-doer who touched them.