Chapter 10 - The Last Known Location of the Ring
TA 2600
The Library At Minas Tirith
Saruman sat at a table in the Library in Minas Tirith, reading an ancient scroll. Everything from the collection in Osgiliath was here. Or to be exact, what was left of the collection was here.
During the civil war known as the Kinstrife, most of Osgiliath was destroyed by fire. The Dome of Stars collapsed, and the huge Palantir it housed fell into the river and was lost. When the building burned, the contents of the library were consumed by fire or buried under the rubble. They rescued what they could and moved it to the Library in Minas Tirith.
Saruman thought he'd read every scroll in Osgiliath pertaining to Sauron and the Ring. But the relocation to Minas Tirith brought to light several ancient scrolls which otherwise would have remained filed away and forgotten, had not the collection been turned upside down by the move. He was reading one of them now.
Isildur's End
The scroll described the Disaster in the Gladden Fields, where Isildur met his end. One of the few survivors wrote of how Isildur's party clashed with orcs on the eastern bank. Isildur had the Ring, and tried to swim across the Anduin river with it. He was killed by orcs just before he reached the western shore. His body sank in the marshy area where the Gladden River meets the Anduin.
The eye witness accounts, over two thousand years old, were as vivid as if they happened yesterday.
But although they told the story of how Isildur was killed, they said where he fell only in the most general terms. It was dark, and he was in the water, a considerable distance away. Furthermore, after he died, the current might have carried his body downstream. Or the river itself might have changed course in the centuries since it happened. The Ring could be underneath a meadow of tall grasses now, for all he knew.
Saruman considered what it meant. The Ring had been lost in the Gladden Fields, and that was the last anyone had heard of it.
Saruman thought of other treasures lost in the river. The Palantir of Osgiliath was on the bed of the Anduin under the Romendacil Bridge[1]. But even though they knew exactly where it was, it couldn't be recovered. The Ring, on the other hand, was small and easily swept away. It gave him a sense of how unlikely it was that it would ever be found.
He wished he could look into the Palantir of Osgiliath just one more time. Maybe it could tell him where the Ring was.
Isildur's Bane
On his next visit to the archives at Minas Tirith, Saruman found the scrolls of Isildur, in which Isildur described how he took the Ring as wergild for his father's death. Isildur's drawing of the Ring inscription was captured the original so well that Saruman could easily recognize Sauron's handwriting.
Isildur's account described the effect the Ring had on him, the depression, irritability, and paranoia. Saruman wondered if Sauron was immune, or if he experienced the same thing. Or perhaps that was his personality now, and the Ring got it from him.
Isildur also said the Ring burned him when he touched it. Was it the same for everyone? Would that make it impossible to wear?
A Walk In The Marsh
Saruman visited the Gladden Fields and tried to find the place where the Ring had been lost. He hiked along the western bank of the Anduin and walked around the marshland trying to sense its presence, but he felt nothing.
It would be nice to find it and lock it away safely. It was the last little bit of clean-up that needed doing, now that Sauron was gone.
At the end of a long day of searching, he walked over to one of the halfling villages nearby and sat in the tavern for a few hours. While he put up his feet and rested from the day, he kept his ears open for any gossip about magic rings in the neighborhood. He didn't hear anything, but it was pleasant to put his feet up and eavesdrop on the conversations at other tables.
[1] .net/Osgiliath