Bringing Trouble to Barad-dur by Aiwen

The Dark Lord Goes Mad

Gil-galad watched as the assorted leaders of Sauron's armies tried to pretend that nothing was amiss, although a few darted surreptitious glances at each other when Sauron wasn't looking. They retraced about half of the things that Sauron had already gone over, but with odd interruptions, as when someone asked about Elessar, and Sauron went off into a long rant about Isildur, Elendil and how much he hated them. It took nearly ten minutes to get back to the original subject.

By this point the surreptitious glances had become much more frequent and a good deal less surreptitious. Then every pretense of normalcy fell apart. Sauron looked up from the route he'd been tracing off the map and fixed his gaze on Khamul with horrified fascination. "Why are your robes purple?" he asked. "Is this some sort of joke, or have my invisible enemies been at your laundry?"

Everyone turned to look at Khamul, whose robes were not purple but black.

"I am not wearing purple, my lord," said Khamul, clearly confused.

"Don't lie to me! It may be dark purple, but that's not good enough. I clearly ordered you to stick to black. I may not have my Ring at the moment, but you will do as I say. You will not defy me like this."

"Lord Zigur, perhaps we should adjourn the meeting for another time," said the Witch King's mother. "There are still several days before Elessar's army arrives, and surely you have preparations to make..."

"No! We will deal with this here and now."

"It was merely a suggestion," she said.

Sauron gazed at her with a disgusted expression. "You're all wearing purple," he said. A sudden air of menace filled the room, and all the Nazgul flinched backwards in their seats as if Sauron had struck them. "I will not brook disobedience," said Sauron. "After this meeting is over, you will go and find yourself something that is black, and I will not see you wearing purple again. Ever."

"Yes my lord," chorused the Nazgul. Gil-galad couldn't help but think of how his own council would have handled him behaving like this. By now the council would have been disbanded, and he would have had a healer examining him, no matter how loudly he protested that there was nothing wrong with him. But Sauron was demanding that his top commanders call black purple and was getting away with it because he hurt people if they did not do as he said. One of many reasons he lost the War of the Last Alliance, perhaps.

When he or Elendil did something stupid because they were too tired to think straight, they had had subordinates to point the problem out and hopefully fix it before it got people killed. Of course if he'd been an absolute leader than maybe he could have prevented Oropher from making that suicidal mistake... but if he'd been an absolute leader it wouldn't have mattered what Oropher did because all they had been fighting for would have been lost before the war had begun. It was also true they had been able to use Oropher's error to gain the Morannon, even if the cost had been far higher than they should have had to pay.

"Are you going to appear to him, or are we just going to let him make a complete fool of himself?" said Celebrimbor. With an effort, Gil-galad brought himself back to the present. Celebrimbor continued: "He seems to be doing a fairly good job of that as it is."

"Oh, I think it's about time we really gave them something to remember." Gil-galad floated himself onto the middle of the table about ten feet from Sauron. Then he shifted his aura so that Sauron could see him. Sauron had been in the middle of a rambling dissertation on the symbolism behind the black banners with the red eye when he suddenly saw Gil-galad. He stopped with his mouth slightly open, mid-word. He tried to jump back from the table, but his throne was in the way so he jumped up on it instead and drew his sword.

There was a collective gasp around the table, and people pushed their chairs back, a few of them darting under the table while most merely jumped away so that they were out of easy sword range.

Sauron's face contorted with hate and range. "You are dead!" he screamed. "I killed you. You are dead!" With that he jumped up on the table and launched himself at Gil-galad, who merely floated towards the high ceiling so that he was out of Sauron's reach. "Come back, you coward," screamed Sauron, "and I'll kill you like I did last time. Foolish, pathetic little excuse for a king!"

"You do realize that Elendil and I killed you too," said Gil-galad. "Considering that you're the one going around with delusions of godhood, I think you are far more pathetic than I am. You show no respect for your followers, you rule by fear, and you are to depraved to know that there is anything wrong with this."

"You couldn't even make your followers obey you!" yelled Sauron. "You didn't kill them when people were rude to you, you didn't even imprison them."

"This council is adjourned," said Khamul, "please leave." After a few more looks at their leader, who was still trading insults with thin air and dead silence, there was a stampede for the doors. The Nazgul alone stayed.

Sauron didn't notice them go, for now Celebrimbor had joined in the fun. "You!"

"Why yes, Oh-giver-of-trapped-gifts, it's me, the person you betrayed so very long ago." Celebrimbor shook his head. "I've always wanted to know, why did you do it? But I suppose the answer is all around us" he said, gesturing to the now almost empty room. "You wanted power so badly you would give up everything else for it. And you have. You have. What a waste."

The Nazgul, meanwhile, were speaking in hushed voices and shooting worried looks at their leader. Gil-galad couldn't hear most of what they were saying, but a sentence caught his attention "do you think we should go find a healer, or we should we just wait for him to fall over?"

Gil-galad grinned merrily. Oh, the benefits of not being a Dark Lord whom everybody fears! Decent medical care, for a start... Sauron saw his expression and took exception to it. He drew a small dagger and threw it directly through Gil-galad. It hit the ceiling and then fell to the floor. Gil-galad blinked, but there was no flashback to his death. "Is that the best you can do?" he asked.

Sauron stretched his hands up into claws and chanted two or three words. A cloudy darkness boiled up out of them and billowed lazily towards Gil-galad and Celebrimbor. Gingerly, Gil-galad poked the edge of the darkness with his toe. It went through the edge of the darkness, but he did not feel anything, so they let the black darkness waft around and through them until it spread out just beneath the ceiling.

"I think your target has to be alive for that to work," said Celebrimbor. Gil-galad looked back at the Nazgul to see how they were taking this. They were now clustered near the door, and one of them appeared to have left, possibly to go and look for a healer. Gil-galad really didn't envy whoever got stuck with that duty.

Celebrimbor had now drifted down below the cloud and appeared to be hovering off the far end of the table. Sauron was looking back and forth between him and Gil-galad, and Gil-galad noticed that Sauron was weaving a little on his feet. But before Gil-galad could say anything, Sauron charged directly at Celebrimbor - tripped on someone's notebook, and fell full length on the table, skidding along the polished wooden surface before being halted by somebody's chair.

Khamul and the female Nazgul traded glances and walked to the table where they tried to assist their lord. Sauron, meanwhile, had sat up. He told them angrily he didn't need their help - if they wanted to help they could go catch Celebrimbor and Gil-galad. "Lord Zigur, we cannot see Celebrimbor or Gil-galad in this room nor can we hear them. We therefore cannot catch them. Can you point out to us where they are?"

"Celebrimbor is just be on the edge of the table and he's laughing at us," said Sauron. "Gil-galad's up near the ceiling where you won't be able to get at him. They are BOTH laughing!" Khamul took out his morgul knife and began to wave it back and forth through the area Sauron had indicated. Celebrimbor, meanwhile, floated himself higher until he was just over Khamul's head. He crossed his arms over his chest and began to sing the part of the lay of Leithian that concerns Sauron's defeat at the hands of Huan and Luthien. "Above your head!" yelled Sauron. "And he's singing... that infernal thing..."

The second Celebrimbor finished that part of the song, Gil-galad started up with a song that celebrated Sauron's demise in the War of the Last Alliance. He hadn't heard it until he'd entered the Halls of Mandos, since it had been written after both of them were dead, but it seemed to suit the situation as Sauron became completely incoherent with rage.

That was the situation the returning Nazgul and the healer walked into.