Chapter 18 - The Return to Mordor
TA 2951
Vanished, Again
The attack on Dol Guldur was successful in that the White Council forced Sauron from his stronghold.
In retrospect, it would have been better to let Sauron remain where he was. In Dol Guldur, they could keep an eye on him. But after the White Council drove him out, they had no idea where he went.
After the attack, Gandalf and Celeborn made inquiries in every town along the road between Dol Guldur and Mordor, but except for an itinerant portrait painter and his wife, no one had been seen heading south.
Seeing Into The Past
As an experiment, Saruman willed the Palantir to show him what had become of Sauron. He watched as dark clouds swirled in the orb. He kept his mind focused, but no image formed.
He was about to turn away, when he thought he saw something. The image showed him a stony landscape. He looked closely, and saw thorn bushes with red berries growing among the boulders.
The scene expanded, and he saw partially constructed walls covered with scaffolding. Cranes were lifting huge blocks of stone from a quarry pit, and workers ran around the construction site like ants.
Then he noticed something else, the beginnings of a huge tower. Even unfinished, Saruman could tell that it was going to be absolutely massive. Orange light from the erupting volcano reflected on its obsidian walls.
Saruman could tell this was an image from the Second Age from around the time of the forging of the Ring, even though it wasn't as faded and blurred as images from the past usually are. He knew that a present-day image of Barad-dûr would show nothing but an enormous pile of rubble beside a lifeless volcano.
Orodruin Erupts
It was ten years before they learned where Sauron had gone. And when they did, it was only because he chose to reveal himself.
Whiffs of smoke were seen rising from Orodruin, and the sky over Mordor glowed orange at night. Then, for the first time since Sauron was defeated at the end of the Second Age, the mountain burst into flame.
The eruption might have been a natural event, except for one thing. Rangers from Ithilien reported a symmetrical feature on the promontory behind the volcano, visible from a hundred miles away. It rose like a spike from the debris field of what used to be Barad-dûr, before the men of Gondor pulled it down and reduced it to a pile of broken stones.
Either one could have been explained away, but together, they could mean only one thing. Sauron had returned to his ancient stronghold and openly declared himself.
They're Back
At about the same time, the Nazgûl reoccupied Dol Guldur.
It was Radagast who first spotted them. He was exploring the woods between Rhosgobel and Dol Guldur when he saw a black robed figure moving delicately between the trees like a deer. Khamûl.
Khamûl and his companions at Dol Guldur, Nazgûl numbers seven and nine, continued to search the Gladden Fields as if nothing had happened.