#I have no memory of saruman making a ring that amounted to anything | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

abeautifuldayfortea · 3 years

Text

Storm

Summary: For the lovely @ladylouoflothlorien who requested this, I hope you enjoy! A/N and timeline for this story is below the story. Reader is an elf child from Celebrian’s escort travelling from Imladris to Lothlorien in TA 2509. For context, Osgiliath was lost in TA 2475. Quote in italics from Unfinished Tales, JRR Tolkien.

Hi hon, could I please request something with Saruman & Reader where the reader was rescued by him as a child and has been raised by him. Something a little angsty where they’re watching his descent into madness and serving the dark lord. Maybe he tries to hide what’s going on from them but they were raised smart and it’s not exactly difficult to figure out. I think this definitely calls for some(?) angst but as for where the loyalties and morality of the reader lie by the end of it is completely up to you. I just saw you were interested in writing for Saruman and this popped into my head, which is strange because I haven’t written anything like this before!!

Words: 1380

From his window in Orthanc, Saruman watched with calculated interest as a lone figure rode hard, out of the safety of Isengard, shrinking and disappearing altogether as they turned behind the feet of the mountains. It was for the north that they rode, onwards toward Imladris and Doriath, seeking Radaghast with his message, and in time they would return, bearing news to him from distant lands. Something about the child had changed irrevocably and though they tried to conceal from him its nature, he could sense their mind had altered from the course that he had set it on. Even the firm persuasion of his voice could not fully ease their troubles.

Making fully sure they were out of view, he sat smoking in thoughtful silence within the privacy of his chambers. Never before had he reason to doubt their will or their capability ere the shadow of Sauron had taken up his mantle in Barad Dur. Yet now, his faith in them wavered for he saw within them a growing doubt, no more than a flicker, but what he was sure would in time grow to a fire that would consume them both. This he feared beyond all else and though he knew it was wise to dispose of them, his heart refused and reminded him of a simpler time, if ever there was one.

Beyond the whistling despair that painted the skirmish he had found them by the gaping mouth of the Redhorn Pass as he journeyed south to the new capital of Minas Tirith to proffer advice. His absence had cost the Gondorians dearly and thirty years on, the sacking of Osgiliath still marred the hearts of many like a suffocating tar. They needed guidance and he would be the one to give it.

But there, at the Redhorn Pass he sensed the biting sharpness of a greater grief and fear. Overhead, the looming shadow of Caradhras cast itself, breathing its chill on the very ground at its roots like the beckoning onset of winter.

The hewn earth. The song of the mountains echoing down the channels. The iron tang of blood on the wind. A memory came to him then on the same winds, a time long ago, far away and hazy as though he stood on the other side of a frosted window, intruding on something that was both intimate and distant. The shaping of iron, the forging of rings and a young man with dark hair and his master by his side. His name was Curunír then.

The vision awoke with him a great unquenchable desire for a past he could not quite remember and yet he yearned for every ounce of it, but as he did, it faded and however hard Saruman pursued it, he could grasp at nothing but a frosty wind. Before his feet lay the scattered bodies of elves, the battered standard of Imladris laying torn … and something else. The bated breath of a child. He was watched.

Saruman turned then beyond the violence and bloodshed, and toward a copse of shivering young oak trees. An elf child. Young but not quite naïve. Impressionable still. His eyes lit.

He remembered with sour hatred the founding of the White Council and Gandalf. His endearment with the hobbit people of the north and though he had mocked him then, he understood now what bound him so tightly to that merry folk. And while his heart went out to the child, he was struck with the bitter undercurrent of jealousy for Gandalf’s hobbit folk. He would take them under his wing to forge as his creation. Not as a child of the woodlands but one that would love fire and iron.

“Well, will you not come forth and tell me your name?” His voice was a gentle suggestion, light, guised as an offer but beneath it was a power so compelling that they could not refuse it. And so it was that the child strode forward to meet Saruman without fear or suspicion and gave him their name. And it is told that they were ensnared and spellbound to him, for a person’s name is ever sweet to the ears of the one it belongs to. In Saruman’s face, the child saw the visage of their lifeless father, only older and wiser for that was the veil he assumed to their eyes. Everywhere Saruman went, the child followed, growing tall and lithe like the long shadows of dusk in the even longer march of time. Their sharp eyes were ever watching and learning, for along his many wandering travels, Saruman taught them the secret way of words and to delve beyond them to discern secret thoughts.

By the time Saruman received the Keys of Orthanc, he was just as endeared to his charge as they were to him and it was as though they were molded from his own flesh and blood. To his charge, he spoke openly of preserving the Free Peoples and while they knew of his research of magic rings, he hid from them his truest desire to be recognised and undisputedly powerful. To rule. Yet this they discerned also, for they walked together through many centuries and as the time passed them by, they saw that he strayed from the road he had set himself upon, walking in the murky in-between of good and evil.

It was at the second meeting of the White Council that it was revealed to them, clear as day. There would be no attack upon Dol Guldur despite Gandalf’s protestations. It was unlike him to be careless, to claim the Ring had fallen to the sea, to deny the possibility of Sauron’s return. Saruman was always thorough, and they knew this to be true. Gandalf sat then, silent, smoking and Saruman mocked him as he always had done.

A beat.

It was in the space of a thought that Gandalf passed his gaze over to the elf by Saruman’s side, searching for some unknown thing within their gaze.

Looking keenly at Saruman he drew his pipe and sent out a great ring of smoke with many smaller rings that followed it. Then he put up his hand, as if to grasp them, and they vanished. (Unfinished Tales, Tolkien)

And the moment passed as quickly as though it never happened. The child who was now no longer a child, watched on as the hazy fumes meandered lazily out of his hands and they knew then that they were not mistaken.

Altered and seduced as Saruman’s mind was, his charge remained steadfast by his side, for the love between them was too great, though they grew ever more uneasy at the methods he resorted to. A ring he had crafted and many coloured robes he wrought, but he did not don them. They noticed the long nights Saruman spent secluded within the high chamber of Orthanc, casting his mind this way and that and communing at times with some veiled power that they shuddered to think of. A host of orcs and men arrived at the gates of Isengard and were welcomed. “As I have given you a home, they too shall have theirs” he had said, and he cast such a pitiful look at them that his charge relented. Great pits were delved and filled with fire and it was with despair that the young elf found themselves at the shores of darkness, upon the cusp of a war that should never have been.

And yet now they rode hard to find Radaghast and set his beasts to Saruman’s task. Before them lay the chance to turn away, to divert the course of the coming war. A chance to warn of bloodshed. A chance to stop children being orphaned before their time. In a sleepless dream, they walked in the halls of memory, to a bloody day at the Redhorn Pass, Celebrian’s abduction, the loss of family and the beginning of a new one. A day when a weary traveller came by and took them in as his own child.

An impossible choice. One that would result in war either way.

They laughed at the folly of it, a peal of bright bells on the air for in the moment for there was nothing they could do but bask in the freedom of clear air with the countless miles between themselves and Isengard. A fair wind danced beside them, masking the foul tang of iron deep beneath the impenetrable tower of Orthanc. Overhead, the stars wheeled as night came and went like the swift kiss of ignorance upon their brow and for a moment in the wan gaze of the moon, everything in the world was as it should be. The knowing silence of the coming storm.

A/N: This was a challenging request (and my first for that matter) and I had much trouble trying to fit in a plausible scenario that matched the original timeline. A goodly amount of research and two weeks worth of fretting over the timeline went into this, but it still feels off :/ and I can’t say that I’m happy with the finished product.

Because the request asked for the Saruman’s descent to evil, the child/reader would need to have a lifespan that would need to stretch for a minimum of 500 years or so. Elves are the only race (bar Tom Bombadil and other strange beings) that has a lifespan matching this and so it is the race that the reader in this story belongs to. Personally, I am of the opinion that elves would take in other orphaned elves and so the scenario from which the child is rescued from must be far enough from the major elf cities to warrant them being raised by Saruman. Hence, I placed them as a part of Celebrian’s escort bound for Lothlorien from Rivendell in the year TA 2509. This small party was ambushed by orcs at the Redhorn Pass (I chose to set the scene at the junction between the Redhorn Pass and the Redhorn Gate because the Pass is described as ‘narrow’ along the cliffs and hence there would not be much room for the reader to hide! The general timeline I used is below:

TA 1000 – Saruman arrives in ME and goes into the east on regular trips

TA 1601 – The Shire settled

TA 2400ish – Saruman returns to the west, discovers Gandalf’s possession of Narya

TA 2463 – White Council formed, Saruman becomes jealous of Gandalf because he is mooted to be head of the council instead of Saruman

TA 2475 – Osgiliath taken

TA 2509 – Celebrian captured

2759 – Saruman gets the keys to Orthanc and settles in Isengard

2851 – 2nd White Council meeting, Gandalf urges attack on dol Guldur, smoke ring incident

#saruman #saruman x reader #istari #tolkien #lotr elves #celebrian #gandalf #curunir #Gondor #isengard #orthanc #elves #lotr fanfic #lotr

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