Bringing Trouble to Barad-dur by Aiwen

Echoes of an Unquiet Past

Celebrimbor, meanwhile, had had an Idea. He went all the way down to the dungeon level and started poking around to see what, apart from dungeons, there might be down there. If there was anything suitable at all, it would be much easier to get the prisoners to it than to somewhere further away. Really, they should have started their search there in the first place...

He spent a lot of time walking through walls and closed doors looking for hollow places that weren't really attached to anywhere else. The tower down here was a lot less well cared for than further up, and cracks caused by the tremors from Orodruin were clearly visible in non-weightbearing structures.

Oh, Barad-dur wasn't about to fall down anytime soon, Sauron was far too careful for that, but if there were minor rockfalls in the dungeons and lower story rooms that killed a few orcs or prisoners, he apparently didn't care. That wasn't much like the Annatar Celebrimbor remembered. Annatar had always payed obsessive attention to detail, but then the maia he had thought he knew was barely visible in the modern Sauron. Or possibly the war was consuming so much of his attention that he wasn't paying attention to things he normally would. Perhaps even their distractions had a role...

Celebrimbor turned the next corner in the corridor he was following, feeling for hollow places as he went. He stopped. There was a very large echo coming from underneath the floor. It was dim, as if deep down, but whatever it was wasn't small. He thought himself through the floor and found himself somewhere utterly dark but very large.

Quietly, Celebrimbor sang a small light into being, which then hung suspended in the middle of the space. It wasn't empty, but was filled was much the same mess of boxes and crates as most of the disused storerooms on the floors above. However, this room appeared a lot more disused than any of those.

It was about four times the size of any of the storerooms they had yet found, with irregular walls that had been partly built of masonry and partly cut out of the living rock. This had been done so long ago that interesting mineral formations had started to form in places. There was a large pool in the left hand corner, fed from a spring coming out of a jumble of rock nearby.

This room was made by hands, but it was old, very old. There were stairs leading upwards, but they were blocked by fallen masonry. Looking around him, Celebrimbor realized that he was looking at a remnant of the original Barad-dur from before its destruction in the War of the Last Alliance. Quite possibly it had never been seen since.

Sauron would never find the prisoners down here. But could the prisoners live here? Was the air good after all those years, let alone the food? What was in those boxes? Was the water poisoned by what was going on above? Celebrimbor floated over to the nearest pallet and started examining it.

To his delight, it contained food. There was a thin but present stasis field surrounding it, almost certainly created by Sauron many years ago. It reeked of the One Ring. With such a field, the food should still be good. He checked other crates, and many of them contained food, although a couple of them had been knocked open by falling masonry and their contents had long since decayed. The vast majority of them, however, were intact. There were also several barrels of ale, and lots of arrows.

Celebrimbor paused to consider. What this room looked like was a place of last refuge in case of Barad-dur being overrun. But why hadn't the supplies been used? From what Gil-galad had said, Sauron had been in desperate straits by the time he came forth. Never mind, he could figure that out later, if the room proved useable.

He drifted down to the water and examined it. The water in the pool looked somewhat reddish. He couldn't smell it, but when he deep-read it he could sense multiple impurities. Celebrimbor frowned, and tried again. If people were to drink this, he needed to figure out just what was in the pool.

Iron seemed to be the main impurity, with lesser amounts of manganese and sulphur. That wouldn't be good for the prisoners in the long term, but it would be far less dangerous than being at the mercy of the guards in the dungeons. There were also some bacteria present, but Celebrimbor had never made a study of microorganisms and couldn't identify them.

So, good food and questionable water. The beer would be welcome, certainly, but there wasn't enough for a long stay. What about air? Celebrimbor reached out mentally and tasted the air. Stinkdamp. If he'd been incarnate, he would be dead by now. He'd have to find some way of venting this underground air to the outside world and preventing the smell from alerting Sauron's minions. However, he knew from all too much experience that dungeons and torture chambers smelled foul anyway. If he vented this carefully, it was likely no one would notice.

Even though the laboratories in the House of the Mirdain had excellent ventilation, they had quickly become defiled once Sauron captured them and Celebrimbor had shown he would be neither informant nor puppet. Celebrimbor shivered, though there was no cold for him to feel. Lord Namo had told him that he had dulled his memories of what had happened there, but he remembered enough. At least now he might get the chance to rescue others... and in many ways that would mean more to him than simply driving Sauron to distraction ever would.

I need to talk to Gil-galad about what I've found, thought Celebrimbor - Gil-galad. Oh no. How long have I been down here? He'll have no idea where I am and has probably been waiting for ages getting more and more irritated. I had better go find him right now.

Celebrimbor floated up through several floors to the agreed meeting place, but Gil-galad was not there.