Plague Comes to Dol Guldur by Uvatha the Horseman

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Day 2 – Fever

Sauron comes down with a high fever and doesn't recognize Angmar.

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Day 2 – Fever

Dol Guldur, TA 1637 - Summer

Sauron lay in bed in the middle of the night, listening with all his senses. He was too anxious to sleep. In his heightened state of alertness, he saw potential threats in every person he didn’t know, every sound he couldn’t identify.

He knew he was a tyrant. He ruled by fear. Although he didn’t normally think about it, he could be surrounded by people who wished him ill, and not even know it. This one might have been punished harshly in the past. That one might have a brother who’d been put to death.

He was too ill to stand without help. He was helpless, so he was forced to trust strangers to take care of him. It meant giving up control, and he hated that.

In his weakened state, he wouldn’t able to defend himself against a pillow over the face. Too large a dose of poppy syrup could make him sleep forever. And when being bled for a fever, it’s normal to pass out. You have to trust the surgeon to loosen the tourniquet and apply pressure to the wound, but if he let you bleed until your heart stopped, you’d never know.

Sauron knew what it was like to bleed to death. It’s pleasant, in a way. You feel sleepy, and your whole body feels warm. Pretty soon you’re not conscious anymore. You don’t even know it when death comes, or when someone hacks off your finger.

Anyone with a grudge could do him in. They wouldn’t even get caught. They’d just say he died of the plague.

Most of the medical staff were people he didn’t know, and unlike the Nazgûl, he couldn’t read their minds. He had no way of knowing how they felt about him.

He summoned Akhorahil, who practically ran into the room, a cloak wrapped around his nightclothes.

“I have new instructions. I won’t allow myself to be bled, and I won’t take medicine while I’m here.”

Akhorahil listened politely. His face was neutral.

Sauron focused his will upon the Nazgûl, and with effort, was able to read his thoughts.

“ … obey you because I have to, but ... still think ... being a moron.”

“I don’t like being so helpless that I ‘m not in control anymore. I’m concerned about my safety.” said Sauron.

“I’ve imposed restrictions on who can get close to you, based on their personal loyalty to the Necromancer. Furthermore, I identified one or two among the medical staff who were not your friends, and I assigned them to work in the village. They’re not even sleeping in the fortress anymore.

“Besides, no one in the ward knows who you are. Your name isn’t on your records. No one’s seen you before, except behind black robes which they assume covers something hideous.” said Akhorahil.

“I’m getting special treatment, better than anyone else in the ward. Won’t that attract attention?”

“It does, but I told one of the orderlies in strictest confidence that you were a relative, and that your father paid for my medical education. Now that’s what everyone in the ward believes.” said Akhorahil.

Sauron nodded with admiration. Even by Sauron’s standards, Akhorahil was good at palace intrigue.

“Except for one thing. If I’m a relative, shouldn’t you and I belong to the same race?” asked Sauron.

“Mixed blood is common enough. I don’t think it undermines the story. Isn’t Khamûl’s mother Elvish?”

“Stepmother. Yes, she is.”

ooooo

Sauron wondered when he’d stopped trusting people.

He trusted Akhorahil. He trusted all of the Nazgûl completely, although he’d enslaved them, and frequently read their thoughts, so perhaps they didn’t count.

He trusted Eönwë and Ilmarë, his closest friends when he was young. They’d never betrayed him.

He trusted both Aulë and Melkor enough to place himself under their protection, in return for loyalty and service. Neither one had ever hurt him, unless you counted the occasional belt or back of the hand, but that was expected, and he didn’t attach any importance to it.

It must have started with Celebrimbor.

They were close friends, but Sauron avoided telling him anything about his life before the Gwaith-i-Mirdain. He let Celebrimbor believe he was a Noldo Elf educated in Valinor, and was careful not to tell him who he really was.

Celebrimbor, for his part, ignored the letters from Lindon that warned him about the visitor whose story didn’t quite add up. He guessed there was something shady about Sauron’s past, bad enough to get him banned from Lindon.

However, he was eager to acquire the knowledge Sauron learned from Aulë. He probably assumed it was something like a father who’d disowned him, or a series of juvenile offenses, followed by repentance, a change of scenery, and a fresh start. At any rate, he politely looked the other way, for which Sauron was grateful.

But even so, he always had to watch what he said. He couldn’t talk about specific names or events or deeds, but he also had to be careful not to say anything that would reveal his age, or race, or the side on which he’d fought during the Rebellion. He could never let down his guard, completely. He could never really relax around other people.

The secrecy kept the friendship superficial, and he got tired of it. He wanted to be able to confide in him. He took the risk. He didn’t tell him everything, but it was enough that Celebrimbor could put the pieces together and guess his identity.

Sauron Gorthaur.

He wasn’t one of the Noldor Elves apprenticed to Aulë. He was a Maia, Melkor’s standard bearer.

Celebrimbor was silent for a long time, trying to process what he’d heard. Then he just said, “I don’t know you anymore. Get out.”

It was devastating. It began the feud that ended with Celebrimbor’s death.

After that disaster, Sauron hesitated to confide the details of his past to anyone. Even with the Nazgûl, he was deliberately vague about his background. He allowed them to believe whatever they liked about how he came by his Wizard’s powers and his long life. He rarely said anything personal about himself, so they had little to go on.

He did reveal a few things to them indirectly. The walls of Barad-dûr were decorated with a series of murals depicting the Forging of the Ring and the short lived Conquest of Arda by Sauron the Great. Those events occurred shortly before the Nazgûl were born. There was another series of murals with scenes from the life of Melkor, in which Melkor looked as beautiful as he had been in life.

The murals were gone, reduced to rubble when Barad-dûr was pulled down after he lost the Ring. But based on those portraits, the Nazgûl must know their Master was a follower of Melkor. However, he never told them he had known Melkor personally, that he was Melkor’s second-in-command and standard bearer.

He told his people in Dol Guldur even less. He was a wizard called The Necromancer. That was all.

ooooo

Now that Angmar was back, Sauron realized how much he’d missed him. Angmar was a close friend. He had few friends, in spite of how outgoing he was. He longed to confide in someone about Utumno, Valinor, and even the Timeless Halls, but knew he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be wise.

But it would be such a relief to stop guarding his words all the time, to stop concealing his past. He was beginning to think it was worth the risk.

ooooo

The next time he woke up, it was still dark in the ward, although there were pools of soft lamplight here and there. He remembered there was a chamber pot under the bed, as there was under every cot in the ward. He started to get up, but the room spun so violently he thought he would be sick. He clutched the sides of the bed and cried out in alarm. A medic appeared around the end of the screen.

“I need help.”

“What can I do for you?” asked the medic.

“I .. um .. I have to use the privy, but I can’t get up by myself.”

“If I helped you to get up, do you think you could sit on the edge of the bed?”

“No, the room is spinning. If I lift my head, I’ll be sick.”

The medic disappeared for a moment and came back with a glass jar. He lifted the sheet, saying, “I need you to put your knees apart.” He positioned the jar and said, “I’ll just step outside for a few minutes to give you some privacy. Call me when you’re done.”

The medic came back in a few minutes and took the jar. Sauron noticed how visible the contents were through the clear glass and wanted to die of embarrassment. Couldn’t it have been made from ceramic or metal or anything opaque, to leave me with one tiny shred of dignity? But the jars in the ward were clear for a reason.

On the other side of the screen, Sauron heard the medic say, “Somebody wake Akhorahil.” When Akhorahil arrived, he heard him say, “Yes, you’re right, this has blood in it. Quite a lot, actually. It’s a common plague symptom, I’m afraid. If he gets any sicker, he may start to bleed from the ears.”

ooooo

Akhorahil left the stage and descended the three or four stairs into the ward. He walked by Section One but didn’t stop. The patients here didn’t receive medical attention, as they were contagious but not yet sick. Akhorahil noticed there were more of them today than there were yesterday. Not good.

He walked into the ward and stopped at Section Two. These were the patients he was most able to help.  He looked around the Section with a practiced eye. There were many people here who were miserable, but one or two who were in grave danger.

He located the chief medic and went over to speak to him. The medic showed him a patient who was debilitated from vomiting. Akhorahil picked up a board from the end of the patient’s cot and read through the pages attached to it. Every cot in the ward had a similar board hung at its foot.

This was the third day of the patient’s illness, he hadn’t eaten since the fever began, and he had terrible pains in his arms and legs. Akhorahil thought the pain was caused by starvation.

“Can you check him for fever?” Akhorahil asked the medic. Akhorahil had trouble judging temperature. To him, all of the living felt fever-hot.

“Medium high. He’s shivering, so it’s on its way up.” said the medic.

Akhorahil rubbed his hands together to warm them before he examined the patient. His hands were ice-cold, and he didn’t like to startle people.

He closed his eyes while examining the patient. With his fingertips moving over the patient’s belly, he was able to see beneath the skin.

ooooo

Akhorahil became a physician because it was one of the few professions open to someone who was blind.

He was a young man still living with his parents when a fever robbed him of his sight. He’d expected to be a ship chandler or a money-lender, but he apprenticed himself to a physician instead.

His family was descended from minor nobility. They weren’t wealthy, but they had a few connections. A second cousin was able to secure him an appointment as a court physician in Annúminas.

Soon he was treating people so far above himself in rank, he never would have dared speak to them on the street.

It was the nature of his post that a noble who was hurting or sick would seek him out, and confide in him deeply personal things of a medical nature. Perhaps it was the trust people put in physicians, but they often confided other secrets in him as well. He learned of political schemes and maneuverings at court he never would have guessed at otherwise.

He discovered he had a talent for court intrigue. The loss of his sight made his hearing keener, and he heard nuances of emotion that others missed. That gave him the ability to tell truth and falsehood in a person’s voice, which the sighted normally missed.

Nothing he learned in his medical studies could restore his sight. Hoping to regain his vision, he began to study sorcery. He learned to see with his mind, which enabled him to see in the dark, and inside closed cabinets, and behind himself.

Being able to see with his mind didn’t restore his sight, but it made him a better physician. When he put his fingertips on a patient’s belly, he was able to see inside the patient’s body. Blockages, tumors, pregnancy, he was able to see and diagnose with ease.

He became a very powerful sorcerer. But when he was invited to wear one of the great rings, it wasn’t for that, it was for how well connected he was at court.

And something amazing happened. As soon as he put on the ring that made him a Nazgûl, his sight returned.

ooooo

Akhorahil picked up the board, added a few notes of his own, and hung it back on the end of the cot.

He went over to one of the large work tables where medicines were prepared and measured out an antidote for nausea, a vile-tasting potion. The medics joked that the smell alone was bad enough to make a patient vomit.

Akhorahil brought the potion back to the patient, and the medic helped him drink it. It came up again almost right away, with more violence than usual. While the medic cleaned up the patient, an orderly mopped off Akhorahil’s face and hair and helped him change his splattered smock for a clean one.

Vomiting and flux were symptoms of the plague, and they could dehydrate a patient severely enough to kill him.

The danger was, when a patient couldn’t keep fluids in, he couldn’t absorb medicine in time for it to work. The irony was, the dehydration itself could cause vomiting, and start a vicious cycle they couldn’t break. Akhorahil tried to give doses of the bitter potion early and often, but the malady moved so fast, it was hard to stay ahead of it.

“Who else needs my attention?” asked Akhorahil.

“We have someone who has the flux so badly he’s drying up before our eyes. His mouth is as dry as cotton, and he can’t spit.” said the medic.

Akhorahil examined the patient and immediately saw how much danger he was in. He decided to move him to Section Three, which was better equipped to care for him.

 

Section Three was for patients who could no longer stand. For patients suffering from the flux, that was a problem. As fast as the orderlies could wash them off and change their sheets, it had to be done again. They simply didn’t have the manpower to keep up. Finally, someone thought to cut a hole in the canvas of their cot and put a bucket under them. That was the only way they knew to keep them comfortable.

Akhorahil washed his hands and changed his soiled smock for yet another clean one before going on to Section Three.

ooooo

The medics there looked up when he approached.

Section Three had the most skilled medics, and the greatest number.

Akhorahil heard an anguished wail from the middle of the section.

“What was that?” he asked.

“He’s out of his head with a high fever. He thinks spiders are crawling on him.”

They led him to the bedside of a patient raving with delirium, screaming and clawing at his own face and eyes. 

“He’ll hurt himself.” said Akhorahil. “Bind his hands to the side of the cot. But bandage his wrists first, so they won’t chafe against the restraints.”

Another medic approached them, looking anxious.

“We have someone here who really needs your help.”

They led him to the bedside of a young woman they hadn’t been able to wake. Akhorahil pulled back her eyelids and used a mirror to steer sunlight into her eyes. Her pupils didn’t react. He looked up at the medics and shook his head.

“There’s nothing you can do? She was brave and cheerful, and we all liked her. We hoped she would make it.” He blinked hard.

“I’m sorry. She’s beyond our help now.” Akhorahil said.

He knew what would happen next. Orderlies would carry her cot to Section Four, at the very back end of the ward. Patients in Section Four didn’t receive medical attention, other than having the dead removed once a day and brought to the mass graves just outside the fortress.

The truth was, they really couldn’t do much for their patients. They could give them food and water, wrap them in blankets, keep them clean, and administer medicines for nausea and fever.

But they had no medicine against the plague itself. It had to run its course in each patient. All the medical staff could do was to make them comfortable while they waited to find out whether the malady would kill or spare them.

ooooo

When Sauron woke, it was light again. He was drenched in sweat. Strands of hair were plastered to his face, and his shirt stuck to his chest and back. He peeled off his shirt and tossed it on the floor. It landed near the wool blanket, crumpled on the floor where he’d flung it off during the night. He kicked off the sheet too, but even naked and spread-eagled, he was still too hot.

Akhorahil came around from the other side of the screen.

“There’s someone here to see you, but I doubt he wants to see that much of you.” he said, and pulled the sheet up to Sauron’s middle. Now he was unbearably hot.

Akhorahil called, “You can come in now.” to someone in the corridor. Sauron twisted around to see who it was. The waterproof cloth under the sheet made a rustling noise when he moved.

The door opened, and Angmar came in.

When Angmar saw him, he put his hand over his eyes and turned away. Sauron was aware the sheet had slipped when he moved, but he felt too ill to care. So now he knows I have pubic hair, big whoop.

A medic discretely twitched the sheet an inch higher. Angmar kept looking at the wall, apparently finding the woodwork interesting. Finally he looked back, keeping his eyes fixed on his Master’s face and nowhere else. But almost right away, he forgot his embarrassment.

“He’s bleeding!” Angmar cried in alarm. “There’s blood on the pillow, and. in his hair.”

Akhorahil hurried over to look. He put a hand on Sauron’s cheek, pushed his head to one side, and lifted his hair. He did the same thing on the other side.

“He’s bleeding from both ears. I didn’t notice earlier, because the blood was covered by his hair. It’s one of the symptoms of the Plague. I’m afraid the severity of the disease has been exactly the same for him as it is for everyone else.”

ooooo

Angmar came back a few hours later to check on his Master. Akhorahil spoke to him in the corridor before he went in.

“He may not recognize you, but he’ll know whether you’re a friend, enemy, or stranger.”

They went in. Sauron stirred, and opened his eyes. He was shaking with fever.

Akhorahil asked very gently, “Do you know who I am?”

“Someone who takes care of me.” Sauron answered.

“Do you know who this is?” Akhorahil indicated Angmar.

“Someone good. A friend.” he answered.

Angmar maintained his composure until they left the room, but outside in the corridor, he leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, and whispered a prayer.