Bringing Trouble to Barad-dur by Aiwen

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Derailing Diplomacy

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There were two people seated around the little table. The first was a rather ordinary man in the red and black robes of Harad, complete with stylized black serpents twining round his collar and cuffs.

The second was almost invisible inside a black velvet cloak with the hood drawn up, but the hand holding his teacup was so emaciated as to be skeletal and had four fingers. They ended in claws. The hand was jet black, but not the black of anything alive - it seemed to absorb all light shining on it, as if it were formed out of a hole from which no light could escape. Of the face, all that could be seen were gleaming golden eyes, slitted as a cat's, and burning with inner fire. By his feet lay two wolves that watched all around them with half-closed eyes.

They spoke, and Gil-galad recognized the language instantly. Black Speech. He listened intently, ignoring Celebrimbor who wanted to know what was going on. The mortal man was an ambassador from Harad's northern principalities, and Sauron was demanding more troops for an upcoming major offensive against Gondor. Sauron wanted the men now rather than later. The Ambassador protested that the numbers Lord Zigur wanted were too high, and couldn't he wait until after the spring planting?

Sauron shook his head, and Gil-galad got a better look at his face. It was just as skeletal as the hands and had the same strange light-eating properties. Gil-galad might have felt sorry for him if it weren't for what he knew that body contained. Sauron twitched the hood back into place with his left hand.

They argued some more, and the Ambassador agreed that he would bring the troops as soon as possible, spring planting or no. . . they switched to less important topics, and Gil-galad turned to explain to Celebrimbor all that had been said.

Celebrimbor frowned, and said that the sooner they started causing trouble the better. An appalling grin spread over his face as he drifted towards the table where the Haradrim Ambassador was just setting down his half empty teacup. Celebrimbor tapped the teacup, knocking it over and sloshing tea across the table and towards a neat stack of mysterious papers.

"My lord Zigur, I am so sorry!" said the Ambassador. He babbled more apologies as he sprang to his feet and attempted ineffectually to wipe the tea from the surface of the table, first with a handkerchief and then with the sleeves of his robe. Sauron, meanwhile, removed the papers from harm's way and glared at him.

"That will be all," Sauron said.

The Ambassador bowed and left, his trailing sleeves discolored with tea. "I am surrounded by incompetents," Sauron said, sighing. He got up and went to the door, where he ordered the guard to find a servant to come and clean up the mess. He then stalked out through a door in the opposite wall that Gil-galad and Celebrimbor hadn't passed yet, followed by his wolves.

"Nicely done," said Gil-galad to Celebrimbor.

"Thank you." Celebrimbor grinned again. "I'm going to enjoy this assignment."

"Indeed. Shall we follow him?"

"Absolutely."

They thought themselves through the door and promptly found themselves in a dimly-lit corridor with doors off to either side. For lack of a better idea, they followed Sauron into an office which had two walls entirely covered in pigeonholes for papers, a large and very imposing writing desk, and multiple filing cabinets. Unlike the public living room, there were no windows.

"Once he leaves," Gil-galad said, "I think we should disarrange his papers in such a way to as to make it obvious that someone's rifled through them."

"And hide any that are important secret plans," Celebrimbor added. "You'll have to do that: I can't read them. We'll need to unlock the doors for it to look like somebody has been through his things. But I think we should wait a little before doing this until we get hold of the Rings."

"Even better, hide the Rings in the personal possessions of somebody like that Ambassador," said Gil-galad. "When Sauron finds them, he will damage his own support base in his rage."

"Sauron will probably kill the Ambassador if we do that," Celebrimbor said.

"The Ambassador is not an innocent. He's conspiring in a war against all the western peoples including what is left of our own. He is at a high level, and must know the risk he runs. I don't think Sauron's behavior towards him is our responsibility."

"You could put it in one of the Ringwraith's stuff instead - it's hard to kill somebody who's already undead," suggested Celebrimbor.

"But he'd know the Ringwraith wouldn't do that."

"The Ringwraiths are Ring-hungry. I don't see why they wouldn't take other Rings if they could."

"They are enslaved, Celebrimbor. I don't think they can even think of betraying their master, let alone act on any such thought."

Celebrimbor winced, visibly. "I never intended any of this."

"I didn't intend to let Eregion fall either. But before we can do any of this, we need to find the Rings. Where do you think they are?"

"On his right hand, one per finger."

Gil-galad looked over at Sauron again, who was now sitting at his desk intently reading something. "I can't believe I missed that," he complained.

"I'm probably more Ring-oriented than you are," Celebrimbor said. "I did make them, after all. If you want to cause havoc in his quarters without him realizing that anything's up, follow his pets and knock things over in their vicinity."

"You're right," said Gil-galad. "I'm to going to go look for the other wolf." He thought himself through one door and then through another, searching first Sauron's bathroom, and then his bedroom.

There he found the wolf. The animal had stood up on its hind legs and placed its paws on the windowsill. It was looking out and whining. Good grief, thought Gil-galad, it wants to go for a walk. It can't get to anywhere outside from here, so what on Arda does he do with it when it needs to attend the call of nature? Never mind, not my problem, although if I could find out and damage the arrangements so that the wolf soils his carpets...Gil-galad pondered options as he examined the windowsill.

There was a complicated and rather pretty ornament there, so Gil-galad gave it a tap and knocked it down. It landed unharmed on a thick rug. The wolf removed its paws from the window and sniffed the ornament which started playing a song in a rather tinny, out-of-tune voice. Gil-galad and the wolf stared at it suspiciously, but it didn't explode or do anything else exciting. Gil-galad shook his head as he wondered why Sauron owned an ornament that played bad music and decided there were some things in this world he did not wish to know.

The song stopped playing and the wolf picked the ornament up and tried to put it back on the windowsill. However, wolf mouths are not really made for delicate ornaments and the thing broke, making a high-pitched shrieking noise the was astonishingly loud for such a small object. The wolf spat out the pieces onto the carpet and ran out the door; right into Sauron.

Sauron glared at the wolf and grabbed it by the collar, shaking it once hard before releasing it. "I've told you a dozen times not to touch anything not on the floor. If you do it once more, you'll be orc food. Or I could demote you to a training mount for baby orcs." The wolf kept its tail between its legs, and then rolled on its belly and put its feet in the air. Sauron continued: "Stupid wolf. Not a decent werewolf to be found in the lot of you. I'm ashamed to be the Wolf Lord these days." The wolf whined again and looked pleadingly up at him, but Sauron merely stepped over it to look at the damage. He shook his head and walked back to his papers. The wolf slunk after him, its tail between its legs.

Meanwhile, in the other room, Celebrimbor had been rearranging things. Gil-galad gasped as he walked in. Both of the piles of paper to be read had fallen from the desk and was now scattered across the floor, and the ink pot was upset over the thing he had been reading. Sauron stopped and stared, then turned to yell at the wolf that had remained in the room. "Just what do you think you're doing? Out! Out!" he pointed at the door, and both wolves scrambled to get out of his sight. "Stay on the balcony and don't go anywhere." He began to clean up the mess, getting ink all over his hands in the process. Gil-galad watched with interest. Celebrimbor glided up to him, grinning.

"You like it?"

"Oh, I like it very much." Gil-galad waved his hand the mess. "However, I think we should go off somewhere and plan our pranks for maximum impact." Celebrimbor nodded and they thought themselves through the ceiling.

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Chapter End Notes

A/N: Zigur means wizard in Adunaic, and is another name for Sauron. It seems like a name he would have been more willing to put up with than Sauron, which means abhorrent or abhorred one ( from the Quenya Saura, which means foul or putrid, according to Wikipedia) and was given him by his enemies. He is known to dislike the name Sauron and refuses to use it.