Bringing Trouble to Barad-dur by Aiwen

Through the Palantir

Celebrimbor had expected to find some sort of attic where they could plot, but they found themselves on a winding staircase that must have come up from inside Sauron's bedroom. He blinked. "Let's go on up," he said. "This staircase must go somewhere."

They floated upwards through a single locked door and into a round room surrounded by windows. In the center was a round table, and on it was a covered object. Celebrimbor pulled the cover off.

"A palantir!" exclaimed Gil-galad. "This really will be giving our friends problems."

"I've heard of the these," said Celebrimbor, "but I've never seen one before. One of my grandfather's lesser-known inventions - my father was always complaining that we should have bought them with us to Middle-earth, but he couldn't reproduce them without materials and tools that weren't available. How did they get here?"

"Elendil brought them from Numenor. This is too heavy for both of us to move even working together," said Gil-galad. "Can you break it?"

"I don't know," said Celebrimbor, an inner voice grumbling about Gil-galad's first thought on being confronted with a long-long and irreplaceable artifact being to break it. "I've never seen one before and they are supposed to be indestructable. It wouldn't be simple like causing metal fatigue. I could damage the table it's on and spill it on the floor, would that help?"

"Temporarily," said Gil-galad. "I'm sure Sauron could find another table somewhere easily enough." He shook his head. "It's not worth it. But if you could do something to the palantir..."

"I'll try, but I think we should save that for later because it will probably take me a long time and we wanted to plan out exactly what we were going to next. So let's plan."

They sat on the table, swinging their legs a little through the air as they talked.

They turned as the door squeaked to see Sauron in the doorway coming towards them. He couldn't see them, but they scrambled out of his way anyway. Sauron frowned at the uncovered palantir, turning to look at the windows as if he expected them to be open. Seeing that they were closed, he turned back to the palantir and sat down in the chair facing west. He placed his hands on either side of the stone and looked into the palantir.

The two poltergeists glided over to behind him where they could look over his shoulder. There were a variety of images, most of which Celebrimbor did not recognize. Gil-galad nodded occasionally as if he recognized something. Then a mortal man appeared in the palantir, looking right back at Sauron.

Sauron gasped as if struck, but did not speak. Instead, he gripped the palantir so tightly his knuckles would have gone white if they could. Clearly something was important about this man, so Celebrimbor examined him more closely. Dark hair, gray eyes and a very impressive sword that appeared to be somehow simultaneously of dwarvish and elvish make. Dwarf-made, and then elf-reforged, perhaps? The unknown man and Sauron continued their staring contest, but whatever passed between them was inaudible to Celebrimbor.

Celebrimbor snuck a look at Gil-galad who was staring into the palantir nearly as raptly as Sauron, muttering "Elendil!" over and over to himself and grinning. Celebrimbor had a nasty feeling that he was completely missing the point of all this.

The end came suddenly and was not what any of them had expected. The picture suddenly shifted in the palantir, and Sauron fell back in his chair, closing his eyes and pressing his hands to his forehead as if in pain. The palantir went dark.

After 30 seconds or so he removed his hands from his eyes, and stared at the palantir suspiciously. He stood up suddenly, knocking over the chair he had been sitting in. He strode through the room, slamming the door behind him so hard the floor shook. Through the door they heard him screaming curses in Black Tongue.

Gil-galad and Celebrimbor stared at each other. "You'll have to tell me what all that was about later," said Celebrimbor, "but I'm going to follow him." He floated through the door and down the stairs.

Gil-galad hesitated for a minute or so, and placed spectral hands on the palantir. It took a few moments for the dark globe to clear, and then Gil-galad found himself looking westward over the river Anduin. There was a city built of white stone. He stared at it for a few seconds before he recognized it as Minas Anor, for the city had grown greatly and it had been long since he had last seen it. With a good deal of effort, he focused inward on the citadel, looking for the descendant of Elendil he'd seen in the palantir earlier.

He was so focused on the palantir that he was startled when the door was thrown open with a booming crash. He took his hands from the palantir and turned just in time to have Sauron walk right through him. Gil-galad leapt aside, but not before feeling an all-too familiar sensation of burning heat.

For a moment all he felt was pain, especially of his throat and hands. He struggled to breathe, grabbing Sauron's arms and kicking out against something he could not conquer. He was growing weaker... then his vision cleared and he was no longer a badly burned elf on the slopes of Orodruin struggling in Sauron's grasp, but a disembodied fea floating just above the floor in the tower of Barad-dur.

Badly shaken, he sat up to see Sauron pull the cover back over the palantir. "Where are you?" Sauron growled. The Umaia stalked around the windows, checking each one as if he expected someone to have climbed in that way.

Belatedly, Gil-galad realized that Sauron could sense that someone had been looking in his palantir. That was going to be a problem if he ever wanted to get a look in again. He shivered, if fea could shiver. He really didn't want to relive his death again. It had been bad enough the first time.

Apparently satisfied, Sauron headed down the stairs closing the door, more quietly this time, and locking it behind him. Gil-galad followed him through the closed door.

Once down the stairs, he stopped in shock. Sauron's bedroom was... a mess. There were feathers everywhere and the duvet had been ripped to shreds by claws. Ornaments had fallen from their shelves and were lying on the floor, some of them in multiple pieces. Gil-galad looked back at Sauron just in front of him, who was standing very still and looking at the mess. "Curse Elendil, and curse his misbegotten and elf-tainted descendent to death and torment! Why couldn't they have drowned with Numenor?" snarled Sauron. Back erect and stiff, he walked through the room, out the door of his quarters and down the stairs, ordering a guard to send his servant Kelas to clean up the mess.

Gil-galad didn't follow, but glided over to Celebrimbor. "How did you manage that?" he asked, gesturing to the mess.

"I didn't really do much," said Celebrimbor. "When Annatar really lost his temper, he tended to take it out on inanimate objects. I wasn't expecting it to be this bad though - he seems to have a lot less self-control than I remember."

"Since there is all this mess already, why don't we go through his things and see if we can find anything that we can cause to go missing?" Gil-galad suggested. They bent down and started opening doors and rifling through files. They found a few things that might be useful, so they took them with them. Then they had to find somewhere to put them. They eventually found this in the form of an attic space just above the palantir room. That was a little awkward, as to take physical objects with them they had to unlock and open the doors. Celebrimbor proved much better at this than Gil-galad, who eventually just let him get on with it.

When Sauron's servant Kelas arrived, they snuck into the attic and planned trouble for Sauron, and for all his cronies in Barad-dur. Gil-galad also started teaching Celebrimbor Black Tongue, for the other elf was getting highly frustrated with not knowing what Sauron was saying.