Chapter six - Saruman, the enemy

Though Saruman had long been corrupt and self-seeking, it was only in the last twenty years – the wink of an eye, to an immortal like him – that he had fallen entirely in the hands of Sauron; crazily sure that he was conquering him. Even when, years later, his actions were made clear, by collecting the memories of former accomplices and subordinates, there was no agreement among the Wise on what had led him to measure himself personally against the ruler of Mordor. Was it an exaggerated confidence in his own power and wisdom – confident that he could face down an evil that Galadriel and Mithrandir did not dare face alone? Or was it rather an unhappy, jealous insecurity, wanting to prove that he was the greatest of the sages, the mightiest in Middle-Earth – when the superiority of Mithrandir was slowly growing clearer — by doing that which Mithrandir did not dare? Or was it an excess of confidence in his tool – he had secretly used the Palantìr for so long, he had come to think of it as easy, as something natural to himself? Or overconfidence in his communication magic, believing himself able to communicate without scathe with the mightiest mind on Earth, even to affect it? Or else – and there was a really unsettling thought – it was it the drag of the other side, the slow seduction of evil and death, a spiritual force of gravity that drew souls downwards, towards annihilation? Nobody, though his actions were discussed for centuries among folk-knowers and sages, was ever sure.

He himself could never have answered the question, for he was not aware of any change in himself; except for a certain lessening of his faculties, a slowing of wit and decrease of power, which he had ascribed to aging, and, more recently – after he had discussed Glory with the Weapon – to the long exile from his native home. The closest he might have come to would have been – if he ever could be induced to reveal his secrets – his long period of research in the records of Minas Tirith. For that was where he had begun what he thought of as his great adventure.

It was an adventure in the past. He was old, so old that his age on Middle-Earth was to be reckoned in millennia; but the things he sought to know were older still. The greatest of them had vanished into the fury of the last war. But people wrote things, during the last war, and kept tokens. A diligent trawl between everything that had been preserved from the war and the preceding ages had yelded much that people had since forgotten. (It was Mithrandir's opinion that his corruption was already evident at this point, as he kept what he was finding strictly to himself and only doled out such small instructions as were necessary – or as might impress others with his knowledge. Of course, learning was a dangerous resource and not lightly to be spread, but to act as if the likes of Galadriel and Elrond could not be trusted with it was either vainglorious in the extreme or paranoid, and either way, bad.)

As he cast his mind, through written witness and memory, riddle and evidence, into thousands of years, he began to seriously measure himself with the enemy. To him, more and more, the maker and lord of the Rings became the central figure of all the story: a watchful and formidable intelligence, expert in all arts, open to all knowledge. He became increasingly fascinated by the lore of the Rings, studying their nature and their impact upon mortals and immortals. He pursued every thread of information about even the least and earliest of those objects, and made many remarkable connections and discoveries. And through it all, he developed a deeper and deeper understanding of the being who had made them. It was a mighty shock, the day that he learned that Sauron had been a Maia, a being like himself, before they both had been sent forth from Taniquetil. Indeed, he thought he could see his shadow through the veil of an obscured and weakened memory, as Mairon the Golden, servant of Aule as he himself had been.

Once he had understood that the skill and power that went into the Rings came from the halls of the great Maker of the gods, Saruman, who had once been Curumo, knew at once, both how they would work, and that they were beyond his skill, to imitate or duplicate. But the idea of possessing them slowly spread itself across the great range of his thoughts, till it had made its permanent home in his mind, and all his thoughts were coloured with the power of the rings. Power means ability, to do and to make, and there was hardly a goal that could not, in his mind, be pursued more easily with a Ring. He even managed to acquire two of the Lesser Rings, which of course only made him hungrier for the Great Ones.

And there he met with something he had never taken into account: impossibility. As he tracked the history of Rings great and small, it became increasingly, infuriatingly clear, that none of them were available to him. The Nine were each held by the ghost of one who was once a mighty mortal king, and belonged body and soul to Mairon… to Sauron, lord of the Dark Tower. When he first came to this conclusion, Sauron was still hidden, recovering from his defeat at the hands of the Last Alliance, and none knew whether he was alive or dead: and of course the Nine Ghosts were either destroyed with him, or else hidden with him and covered by his power. The mighty Three were each with an Elf-Lord, and while Cirdan, Galadriel and Elrond all were happy to let him examine and study them in their presence, any attempt to possess them in any way would, he knew, have led to the immediate sundering of their bond, and probably to open war. Besides, he was not so corrupt, at the time, to seriously want such a thing; although he did feel a deep frustration that his allies had the power of the Three at their disposal, while he could not even touch them without ruining the whole White Council. But what really devastated him was the discovery of what had happened to the Seven, Sauron's Dwarven Rings. To establish anything to do with Dwarves is never easy, and Saruman took, in uncovering and analyzing Dwarvish history, at least three times the time, effort and magic he had used in all his other researches. And at the end…! When he had his final, indubitable proof that the last of the four lost dwarven rings had in fact been destroyed, like the others, by a dragon, his frustration turned to a burning, murderous fury, a fury that did not abandon him until he had found each of the four dragons that had destroyed the rings, and destroyed them in turn. It was while hiding from Saruman that Smaug the Golden, in 2770, came upon the Dwarves of Erebor, slaughered them, and stole their home and their gold.

And yet Saruman cared nothing for him, since he was not one of the four destroyers of rings; and he had long since left the North, his mission of personal revenge completed, bitter and unfulfilled. Four dragons had died, to no purpose. No ring had been recovered, indeed no ring could be recovered – except for the One; of which it was certain that it was lost – for the signs of it being retrieved, thought Saruman, would be unmistakeable. (Later, as the final war was already raging, Sauron was to mock him with an account of how the Ring had in fact been found by the creature called Gollum – the moral of the fable being, for Saruman's use, that none without the appropriate stature could make proper use of it, and that the only one of the appropriate stature was he who had first made it.)

None of this was known to the Wise, except for the fact that for some twenty years, Saruman had been out of sight. Nobody was greatly worried by this, since it was the way of all five Istari to appear and disappear as they pleased; except that he would no doubt have been some help in the terrible double invasion of the Corsairs and the Easterlings, during which both Rohan and Gondor had come close to destruction. Beren the Steward was therefore delighted when the mighty wizard offered to become the permanent Lord Warden of Orthanc and Isengard, and gladly handed him the keys.

Saruman had greatly changed. He wandered less and less, and spent more and more time in Orthanc, studying and thinking. Nobody knew that he had taken that seat because he knew that one of the ancient Palantiri, the seeing stones, was there in an inner chamber that only men of mighty wisdom could access. And it was at this point, it seems, that Saruman made the transition, in his own mind, from being a friend of the Light to being no more than an ally. He still worked against Sauron and all that depended on the Dark Lord, but only because Sauron was the biggest obstacle in the way of his search. For the certainty that the Three, the Seven, and the Nine, were all beyond him now, had not put an end to his obsession; it had only focussed it on the one ring still unaccounted for – the one that had been taken from the hand of the Enemy when he had been defeated – the One Ring, master of all. Impossible though it sounded, this was the one ring that was still in nobody's possession. If Saruman had to surrender hope of any other Great Ring, that One would be his, at the price, if necessary, of his complete ruin. How far his obsession had taken him is shown by a manuscript found in the study of King Elessar's chief scribe and secretary, detailing a horrible discovery:

"...King Elessar, when he was crowned in Gondor, began the re-ordering of his realm, and one of his first tasks was the restoration of Orthanc, where he proposed to set up again the palantir recovered from Saruman. Then all the secrets of the tower were searched. Many things of worth were found, jewels and heirlooms of Eorl, filched from Edoras by the agency of Wormtongue during King Théoden's decline, and other such things, more ancient and beautiful, from mounds and tombs far and wide. Saruman in his degradation had become not a dragon but a jackdaw. At last behind a hidden door that they could not have found or opened had not Elessar had the aid of Gimli the Dwarf, a steel closet was revealed. Maybe it had been intended to receive the Ring; but it was almost bare. In a casket on a high shelf two things were laid. One was a small case of gold, attached to a fine chain; it was empty, and bore no letter or token, but beyond all doubt it had once borne the Ring about Isildur's neck. Next to it lay a treasure without price, long mourned as lost for ever: the Elendilmir itself, the white star of Elvish crystal upon a fillet of mithril, that had descended from Silmarien to Elendil, and had been taken by him as the token of royalty in the North Kingdom…

When we considered this secret hoard more closely, we were dismayed. For it seemed to us that these things, and certainly the Elendilmir, could not have been found, unless they had been upon Isildur's body when he sank; but if that had been in deep water of strong flow they would in time have been swept far away. Therefore Isildur must have fallen not into the deep stream but into shallow water, no more than shoulder-high. Why then, though an Age had passed, were there no traces of his bones? Had Saruman found them, and scorned them – burned them with dishonour in one of his furnaces? If that were so, it was a shameful deed; but not his worst..."

So far could Saruman have sunk even centuries before the War of the Ring, and yet still seemed plausible and upright to all his allies, which included the wisest and shrewdest creatures then alive. The bones of Isildur had no doubt been recovered in the course of his fruitless search for the Ring, and it seems likely that they had been localized thanks to some Orcish record of the ambush of the Gladden Fields, for no surviving Gondorian record has anything to say about where the body of the hero-king had fallen, and it is known that Saruman plundered ancient Orcish holds and interviewed, or tortured, very old members of the race. But he had not yet fallen as far as he was to. Some time about twenty years before the War of the Rings, he had pointed the Palantìr of Orthanc, not even just at Mordor, but directly at Sauron. That was the last stage of his downfall; not that he was fascinated by the mind and thought of the Enemy, but that he no longer even saw to what an extent he was fascinated. He had got to a stage where the mind, the actions, the motivations, of the Dark Lord, seemed to him normal rather than foul. And so, his actions, his behaviour, became imitations of the Dark Lord's, beginning with the fortification of Isengard and the start of a breeding program of his own kind of orcs. Saruman knew perfectly well how Orcs bred, and the choice alone of breeding yet more of them – placing living beings through the structured horror of Orc generation and Orc birth – would have told anyone that Saruman had reached the bottom of degeneracy. But nobody knew. For two decades, his delvings below Isengard grew deeper and deeper, and more and more orcs were sent to swarm in uninhabited places, mountains and swamps.

What Sauron knew and understood of the change, in this leading enemy of his, will never be clear; but it is clear that he did nothing to hinder the rise of Saruman into a military and political power. His Orcs, far more numerous, could have stopped the spread of Saruman's Uruk-Hai by brute force, and nobody the wiser; "What happens among the Orcs stays among the Orcs," said a Westron proverb. In fact, the Mordor Orcs seem to have cooperated with the Uruk-Hai whenever they met, with no more bloodshed than was ordinary among their species. It took years for Men, Dwarves and Elves to notice the rise of a new kind of Orc, but nobody thought of connecting the Uruk-Hai with Isengard or Saruman.

Saruman built up his power slowly, and kept it hidden from sight. In fact, when he started hiring workers from neighbouring Dunland and Rohan, it seemed as though he were opening his small estate (nobody but himself thought of it as a kingdom yet) to his neighbours. In fact he was reaching out to manipulate both realms. His intent was conquest and overthrow; and, in both nations, he found material to work on. The discontent of the Dunlendings, squeezed between mountains held by Rohan and the deserted and dangerous plains roamed by Orcs and chiefless folk, was perfect material for Saruman's fingers. Among the Horsemen he found less anger and discontent, and so he reached rather to the court and the mighty men of the land. For a long time, Saruman had been regarded as a privileged, if mysterious, neighbour, and his ancient wisdom was revered. Many noblemen were happy to attend Saruman's little court in Isengard when they could. The noblest families in royal Edoras often took pride in having a friend of the wizard's among them, and his ideas and suggestions spread as if born from the nature of things.

But Grima Galmodsson, Lord of the West-Treding of Westfold, had an advantage over everyone else. From his fiefdom, many secret mountain paths led directly into Isengard, and he had long (as the years of mortal men are reckoned) been consulting with the wizard in secret. The insights he received from the old sage, and his own meditation on them, and what he would reveal of them to the king and his court, gained him a growing reputation for wisdom. This pleased him, and he began to use it to rise in the king's favour; as Saruman had meant all allong.

However much ambition the breasts of Rohan noblemen might harbour, Saruman had trouble stoking it into disloyalty to the King, and that for many reasons; not only because of their native habit of loyalty, but also because Théoden was a good king, giving little excuse to any faithless thought; and because the kingdom's small noble class lived cheek by jowl, almost like a large family, in which it was hard to look on the king as other than a father; and finally, because of the mere common sense that stood in the way of any fantasy of rule, letting the noblemen recognize their own limits. The best – the worst – that Saruman could do with this aristocracy was to feed into them a habit first of secrecy, then of unconscious suspicion, so that nobody confided in anyone else if they could, and a vague sense of distant danger seemed to hover at the back of many minds.

Part of this came from Saruman's subtle manipulation of all the minds who came to him. Grima Galmodsson was hardly the only nobleman of Rohan to be a regular visitor to Isengard, at least in early days. It had been at least twenty years since the wizard had last visited the Golden Hall in person, but for a long time individuals and families had kept making the journey to the tower among the mountains. As the years went by, the numbers diminished, reduced by deaths and ageing, by distractions, and, in many cases, by a subtle, mostly unconscious sense of unease that spread from Isengard. For the truth was that Saruman worked constantly, yet too subtly to be detected, to subvert their loyalty and to instil a sense of mutual distrust among them, motivated by vague fears about the future that Saruman himself stoked.

Within a few years, there was an unstated, unacknowledged competition to become the wizard's favoured friend, that was won by Grima Galmodsson. In the last few years, he was one of the few who still visited Isengard regularly. The curious thing is that the prestige of Saruman at Edoras had not fallen at all; even as fewer and fewer of the King's men went to visit him, his image retained admiration and trust, burnished by a reputation for wisdom that had lasted for centuries.

But it was Grima, rather than any other aristocrat, who had fallen wholly within Saruman's hands. For the aging Lord of the West-Treding had an ancient habit of lechery that had not faded with age, kept alive by frequent dalliances with willing village girls. And in the last few years, it was this lust, turning somehow into something he thought of as love, that had given Saruman the key to his soul.

Saruman had not seen Eowyn Eomund's daughter since the last of his rare visits to Edoras. He remembered a pair of tiny hands barely emerging from a mass of embroidered white linen, and an earnest, bewildered little face with huge blue eyes and hair so light it was almost white. But in recent years he had become familiar with Grima's view of her growing, blossoming womanhood. Saruman saw the beginnings of an obsession in him, and fostered it as much as he could, till the old nobleman was dominated by his fixation with the princess – with her full lips and peach complexion, her long legs and powerful flanks, her breasts, her golden hair. A friend, or anyone who wished Grima any good, or even who had sense, would have done their best to discourage it, to point out the absurd difference in age and rank. Saruman found it more convenient to stoke the senile fires in his follower, till Grima found himself fantasizing about overthrowing the royal family, and sitting on the throne himself, with a blonde princess by his side. At the very least, Saruman was happy to see his loyalty undermined and destroyed; at the worst – who knows what mischief could one day happen in Théoden's court, if Saruman ever needed it?

At some point during this period, thanks in part to the suggestions that Saruman gave him during their increasingly confidential meetings, Grima had been made chief counsellor to the King, and bestowed the nickname Elvenrede, or Elventongue. (It was only long after that discontented voices deformed that into Wormtongue.) That placed Grima exactly where he should never have been – in constant closeness to the King's niece, needing to always display the highest loyalty even as greed and evil imagination were destroying it from inside. Afterwards, some came to believe that his tendency to make the King feel weak and old reflected his own weakness and age, the truth he did not want to face – that even if every other man in Edoras were dead, Eowyn would never even consider his withered flesh.

Grima's influence grew as the years moved towards the great war to come. Orcish bands were more numerous and widespread, and trade between kingdoms fell off. Old jealousies were reawakened, and the news came from the far south that the ancient feud between the Corsairs of Umbar and the lords of Gondor had been formally reopened. Dwarves, traditionally not unfriendly to Men, seemed to disappear or to hide in their delvings. Strange fevers seized cattle and horses.

The first open act of the Lord of Mordor towards Rohan was not obviously hostile; indeed, people with no idea of the background might even have interpreted it as a friendly approach. He sent an emissary to buy some of the renowned Rohan horses, for a good price. As it turned out, Grima did not even have to trouble himself about the response – the whole of the king's court (whose members were naturally the biggest horse breeders in Rohan) exploded into refusal. Too many lords of Rohan had seen what happened to horses in the hands of Mordor forces, even if Orcs did not lay their claws on them. Every one of the King's Horsemen had spent the best years of his life working hard to learn to ride and to train horses without cruelty and without waste, and they all had their stories of falls, accidents and broken bones. They loved their horses like brothers. Even Grima, cold and unmilitary as he was, understood that perfectly well; he never travelled without his palfreys and his own beloved destrier. His only part in the affair was to suggest to the king a suitably emollient and diplomatic formula for refusal.

But if the Rohirrim thought that the issue had been settled, they soon found they were badly wrong. The Dark Lord was not in the habit of taking no for an answer, in trade as in anything else. Orc raids began on the very night when the court of Edoras had unanimously rejected the king of Mordor's offer; indeed, two King's Horsemen who had been at court, and seen the Mordor envoys in the face, swore that they recognized them among the raiding party that dragged away a couple of dozen black horses across the swamps past the great river.

After consulting with Grima and other advisers, King Theoden responded to that outrage by declaring a feud against the Orcs of Mordor. Some of his men were surprised not to have an open declaration of war with Mordor, but many others felt that the Mark was not ready for war against a power whose potential was unclear and mysterious. And while the court nobles were not yet conscious of it, over the last several years, insecurity and disorder had been increasing. People did not travel unless they had to, and the borderlands and forests were increasingly deserted. Orcs, Trolls and Wargs had always lived there, and their numbers had grown so slowly that people were not aware that they were growing.

But the Dark Lord's proposal was the beginning of increasingly open and reckless action. And as the Rohirrim, like everyone else, had no idea of Saruman's betrayal, things happened by surprise and as if out of nowhere.

At the same time, Grima's reputation as a sage adviser was reaching its zenith. The formula by which Rohan rejected trade with Mordor had universally been greeted as elegant and unexceptionable; and if the Orcs had refused to abide by it, you could hardly blame Grima for that. And when he advised that Rohan should declare a feud against the Orcs of Mordor rather than war against its King, that seemed so obviously the right choice that nobody stopped to wonder whether it sounded like a long-term solution.

It did occur to some nobles to wonder whether the sudden onset of age and weakness that had made the King almost unrecognizable in less than a year was due to some trick of Mordor; nobody imagined it could come from Saruman, let alone from the trusted Chief Counsellor. Nonetheless things went ill, more and more ill, and nobody could gainsay it. Trade with Gondor and other realms fell off, because travel between kingdoms had become more dangerous, and because the people found the forests and the high mountains more and more dangerous, and so such activities as herding sheep and cattle and picking thermiss flowers fell off. It seemed to be good news that the number of known bandits and forest gangs had fallen off, till people added up some facts and realized that it was because the forests had become too dangerous even for armed criminal bands. And soon it became clear that worse things were replacing them. Orcs were frequently seen in the shadows, and there were one or two dreadful stories, that went the round of the kingdom, about Wargs abducting and eating children.

It was at this time, in the Spring of 3018, that Saruman summoned the Weapon of Victory. It was the first step in the progress towards betrayal and open war: Saruman was preparing to throw off his mask and claim the kingship. He had long started the manoeuvres to turn the ancient, half-forgotten dislike between Rohirrim and Dunlendings into a hate he could stoke into war, and the goal was now within reach. He was also, at the same time, setting the trap for Gandalf into motion. Edoras and Dunland were helpless, as fascinated by him as mice by the gazef of a snake, and wholly unaware of their real plight. At court, indeed, many if most lords had trouble believing that a friends so powerful as Saruman, the great white wizard, could have turned. Long after that summer, warnings and suggestion fell on stony ground, and the echoes of growing banditry and trolls on the borders came very muffled to the court at the centre of the kingdom.

The expulsion of the Rohirrim from Isengard served not only to further embitter Dunlendings and Rohirrim against each other, but to remove any possible observer from the shadow of Orthanc. For at this point Saruman's plans were moving into high gear. He could no longer be sure that the increasing number of Orcs and Wargs, the ferocious military training, and the massive production of weapons and armour, would not be noticed. The Dunlendings, completely committed to war, were not going to find the growing preparations troubling. Meanwhile the incidents on the edge of Rohan and Gondor actually decreased, as more and more Orcs were drawn to Isengard to be trained for army service.

But the expulsion, for which he had worked for months, was quickly followed by something Saruman had neither wanted nor planned for: Buffy's flight from Isengard. From the moment he had found her gone, she had been a grave concern to him, and had affected all his designs, even unexpected features such as his plans for Rohan.

It had begun with a sense of impotence. His first impulse had been to call for a Wild Hunt for her, but, as soon as the thought came upon him, he knew there would be no point. During her stay, he had been able to observe her speed, and knew that she was faster than any of his Wargs. He might, with luck, have horses that could reach her, but he had too few horses.

From this his mind went back to the long problem of horses. He was chronically short of horses. Before he could breed them properly, he had to disabuse his Orcs of the idea that horses are for eating; and he had not managed that yet. He had to resort to pretty severe methods, and he still could only really feel safe by stabling such horses as he had in Dunland, which placed him more in debt to the Dunlendings than he wanted to be. (His game was always, owe nobody anything and have as many groups as possible owe him.) The Dunlendings were quite willing, since raising horses made them feel that they were doing something to challenge the horse-riding Rohirrim, but in fact the few hundred horses they had managed to grow were not in any way comparable with the thousands of splendid Rohan beasts. And this placed Saruman in a position of weakness on the great chessboard on which he was playing. Horses were useful in battle, but they were even more useful in shifting forces across the land, faster than any Orc infantry and more reliably than wolfriders. So Saruman's first target was Rohan, to subdue or conquer; either to take control of its horse herds, or to destroy them so that nobody could use them against him.

Meanwhile events moved on at an increasing pace. One day before the Summer Solstice, Sauron attacked the ruins of Osgiliath at last. This troubled Saruman little. As far as he was concerned, the war was not only inevitable but actually started long since, and its manifestation to Mortals was a minor matter – just Sauron concluding that he had nothing more to gain by stealth. He had understood, from their conversations through the Palantir that the Ring had been located and was in play – the very thing for which he had been hoping beyond hope for so many years. And while he had never seen the creature Gollum, he knew more than the Dark Lord about what kind of thing it was. And on July 10, Gandalf himself fell into his trap and was taken prisoner. Gandalf, indeed, could blame himself for falling into the trap: at the last minute, as he was entering Isengard, he had clearly seen how the place was changed, and still did not draw the conclusions. Perhaps he was too focused on the horror of the Nazgûl being unleashed on the West, of which he had heard not only from Saruman (though Radagast), but also independently, and whose very taste he had felt in the wind as he travelled. But once he was caught and held on top of Orthanc, he had all the opportunity to observe the Saruman's armies gathering, the weapons being made and stockpiled, the soldiers being trained. He noticed, once or twice, the strange little blonde woman who went with the Rohan warriors, and saw with concern their expulsion, which left their Dunlending enemies alone with Saruman and his Orcs.

In mid-July, on the harvest-eve week-end, he saw Grima Galmodsson riding up to Orthanc alone. He knew him well from his visits to Edoras, and had long suspected him. What he did not see, however, was the terrible rage that seized Saruman when he found that the Weapon of Victory, whom he had been looking for across the West, had been staying at Huntaworde, on his own borders, for all the months during which her fate had troubled Saruman. And he did not see the horror that swept through Grima when he first understood that his master wanted Huntaworde destroyed, as a cover for the murder of the Weapon. He took no time at all to decide that Huntaworde must be destroyed, and that the Weapon of Victory must be the chief target of the raid, which must happen immediately after Grima had passed through the village on his way to Edoras.

Grima had never before met such a mood in Saruman – in he whom he now realized, with horror, that he must call his master. Grima had always believed that he could call Saruman his partner, his ally, his friend. Now he knew that he had no choice. Sarumans words swept over his wretched spirit like armies arrayed for combat, trampling, overwhelming. He showed to him the summary of all the crimes that he, Grima, had already committed in his service, and asked whether the lives of a few Westcountry men really mattered more than all the death they had already caused, and that they would cause yet, in the pursuit of power over Rohan, Gondor and the West. He even revealed the things he himself, Saruman, had done to destroy the four dragons that had deprived him of four rings. Grima had never in his life stopped to think about the sum of the things that he had cooperated with, or subtly defended or concealed from Theoden, or just witnessed or known about. Suddenly he realized that he had given himself over to a ruthless, desperate logic without an end, pushing down, down, down. That was the horror that ruled him when Buffy saw him for the last time in Huntaworde

This was the ghastly burden that Grima Wormtongue bore on the day he came back to Huntaworde, the burden that Buffy perceived in him. And Grima had been terribly tempted to reveal everything to this strange foreigner who moved so silently in and out of people's lives; even though he would brand himself for the blackest of traitors, were it not that he was certain that she and Huntaworde were doomed. The words of Saruman were still lodged in his mind, stronger than any other presence. So he said nothing, and left his own liege-folk in the path of coming destruction.

But as a shivering Grima was leaving Isengard, Saruman himself was coming down from the height of fury that had taken the form of those words. He remembered the strength, speed, resilience of the Weapon: how she had calmed two groups of men about to tear each other to pieces, by beating the both of them back at once. And so, when the time came to give his commanders their orders – and to brand his voice once again in their souls – he indeed ordered the Lady Baffy's death, but also the alternative plan, if she proved too hard for them, to separate her from other humans and drive her into a wilderness in the high mountains. And so they did.

Meanwhile, as he followed his men's pursuit of Buffy, a grim thought began to take shape in Saruman's mind. When Osgiliath had fallen, early in July, Sauron's forces were led by a great black horseman who welded deadly terror as a weapon. Sauron had allowed the Lord of the Nazgûl to manifest himself openly on the battlefield. He had thus revealed his last and most dangerous secret to all his enemies, and it made no sense to Saruman that he should do so for such a small target as the ruined city. The Nazgûl were a weapon to be unleashed for the greatest and most decisive battles. Nor did it make sense that he should so carelessly let his enemies know that the Nazgûl were in the game. There still were powers, including himself, with the potential to face and perhaps defeat the Nine. He reflected long on the riddle, and he reached the conclusion that the Enemy wanted his opponents to believe that the Nazgûl were at the front, when he was deploying them somewhere else for some other purpose. It did not take him long to conclude that the hidden purpose of the Nazgûl could be nothing else than to reach him. Sauron had realized that he was a traitor.

In fear and despair, and perceiving the full horror of service to Mordor, Saruman resolved suddenly to yield to Gandalf, and to beg for his pardon and help. He wrestled a whole night and day with his thoughts, and in the morning he hastened to the summit of Orthanc – and found Gandalf gone. Away south against the setting moon he saw a great Eagle flying towards Edoras.

Now Saruman's case was worse. If Gandalf had escaped there was still a real chance that Sauron would not get the Ring, and would be defeated. In his heart Saruman recognized the great power and the strange "good fortune" that went with Gandalf. But now he was left alone to deal with the Nine. Two days after Gandalf's flight, the Lord of Morgul stood before the Gate of Isengard.

Saruman had spent the intervening two days in wrath and fear. He could now see his danger, standing between enemies, a known traitor to both. His dread was great, for his hope of deceiving Sauron, or at the least of receiving his favour in victory, was utterly lost. Now either he himself must gain the Ring or come to ruin and torment. But he was wary and cunning still, and he had ordered Isengard against just such an evil chance. The Circle of Isengard was too strong for even the Lord of Morgul and his company to assault. And to when he heard the Lord of Morgul – stopped at the gate, and hearing Saruman's voice from the air through Saruman's power, demanded information about Baggins and the Shire. Saruman resolved to show his hand – at least in part.

"It is not a land that you look for," it said. "I know what you seek, though you do not name it. I have it not, as surely its servants perceive without telling; for if I had it, then you would bow before me and call me Lord. And if I knew where this thing was hid, I should not be here, but long gone before you take it. There is one only whom I guess to have this knowledge: Mithrandir, enemy of Sauron. And since it is but two days since he departed from Isengard, seek him nearby." This was itself a lie; Saruman knew that Mithrandir, or Gandalf, had been taken away on the back of a great eagle, and that he might by now be almost anywhere, and certainly not "nearby." But much though he hated Gandalf, it would have been in every way against his interests to feed him to the Nazgûl. And then a thought came to him unbidden: iassuming that the Nazgul could defeat him, and not he them./i

Such was still the power of the voice of Saruman that even the Lord of the Nazgûl did not question

what it said, whether it was false or short of the full truth; but straightway he rode from the Gate and began to hunt for Gandalf in Rohan. And so, on the evening of the next day the Black Riders came upon Grima.

Many things had happened in Edoras after Grima's last visit to Orthanc. Grima has only briefly been in Edoras when news of the Orc raid on Huntaworde reached the court. His last interview with Saruman had been different from previous ones not just in degree but in kind. Dragged by his fury, Saruman had not stopped to discuss the situation in Edoras and the various possible reactions of the various actors, as he usually did, and neither had Grima done anything to start such a discussion. He only wanted to get out. But the result was that he came to Edoras with an unclear mind and no instructions, and he bungled things badly. His reputation for wisdom came largely from his secret discussions with Saruman, which ended in detailed sets of instructions and suggestions. But now, when the news of the raid on Huntaworde reached Edoras, he realized that he had no idea how he should deal with it. And since it was his own fiefdom that had been attacked, he could not escape giving opinions and suggestions.

He gave all the wrong ones, beginning with a very human sense of relief that the village had not been wiped out – understandable, in view of his terror at Saruman's intention, but a remarkably nerveless reaction in the eyes of Rohan noblemen who had no idea of his experience. Then he gave in to the disastrous habit of minimizing the crisis, sounding as though he did not think it was as bad as messages made it. This, again, was entirely contrary to the natural instincts of warrior Rohan nobles. Courtiers and lords were disappointed: was this the wise Chief Counsellor, the Elventongue?Eventually, the advice he gave was ambiguous, sounding wise but amounting in effect to doing nothing. Until now Grima's reputation for wisdom had been high, but now some of the courtiers begin to look at him with doubt in their minds.

Two important people, in particular, had their faith in the Chief Counsellor's completely shattered: Theodred, the heir apparent, and his cousin Eomer, the second in line. Closer to the King than anyone, by position and by kinship, they had long found Grima's influence on the King unpleasant. Theodred was certain that Grima, whether by suggestion or by sorcery, was unmanning his father, and Grima's lack of loyalty towards his own liege people struck him like a blow. Eomer did not like the way he looked at his sister Eowyn. Both of them had found, in their intense personal closeness with the King, more reason to doubt and indeed to dislike the influence of the Chief Counsellor, than anyone else in the court – except perhaps Eowyn, who kept her thoughts to herself.

But before the two princes had had the time to consult, Gandalf came to the court like a gale, the bearer of horrible and unwelcome news. He charged Grima directly with treason and informed everyone who would listen that Saruman had betrayed them and could not be trusted. King and princes were utterly at odds, and Eomer, more impulsive than Theodred, did not scruple to show that he took Gandalf's word against his father's. There was a shameful scene in the King's Hall, during which Eomer had to be held back from Grima by Theodred himself; after which King Theoden had exiled Eomer to Eomer's own eastern fief.

This was the news that Grima (on whom Gandalf had just bestowed the nickname Wormtongue) was hastening toed to bring word to Saruman that Gandalf was come to Edoras, and had warned King Théoden of the treacherous designs of Isengard. In that hour the Wormtongue came near to death by terror.

"Yea, yea, verily I can tell yon. Lord," he said. "I have overheard their speech together in Isengard. The land of the Halflings: it was thence that Gandalf came, and desires to return. He seeks now only a horse.

"Spare me! I speak as swiftly as I may. West through the Gap of Rohan yonder, and then north and a little west, until the next great river bars the way; the Greyflood it is called. Thence from the crossing at Tharbad the old road will lead you to the borders. 'The Shire,' they call it.

"Yea, verily, Saruman knows of it. Goods came to him from that land down the road. Spare me, Lord! Indeed I will say naught of our meeting to any that live."

Here the Lord of the Nazgûl made the same mistake as he had made at the gate of Isengard: he did not continue questioning. He was within one or two questions of being told that, as they spoke, Gandalf was either in Edoras, taming a horse for his purposes, or just gone from there. Instead, he assumed he could find him in the Shire, following the road Grima had described; and Grima would undoubtedly have told him – he said so himself in the memories he wrote long after.

The Witch-King just left his victim behind, despising him as someone who could do him no harm. He was sure that so great a terror was upon him that he would never dare to speak of their encounter (as proved true), and that the creature's weakness and evil were likely to do great harm yet to Saruman yet. So he left him lying on the ground, and rode away, and did not trouble to go back to Isengard. Sauron's vengeance could wait.

When Grima Wormtongue reached Orthanc, he was certain that Saruman would perceive his terror and discover his treachery. And indeed he was in no condition to cover his thoughts. What saved him was that as he came, Saruman was being informed that Weapon of Victory had fallen into a canyon and was dead. Saruman spent hours at the Palantir, doing nothing but watching the girl's body as it lay at the bottom of the cliff, occasionally laughing as he saw his Orc servants throw ordure at her. By the time he was certain that Buffy was dead, he had little interest in discussing Edoras and the affairs of Théoden's court. His questioning was perfunctory and his instructions unusually short and fairly useless. And perhaps it was helped by the fact that, within Grima's own desire not to instruct his master, there lurked still a fragment of the stronger will of the undead Witch-King of Angmar, commanding him to keep a straight face and not show anything that might make Saruman suspect him. Still, it is certain that, without this piece of intensely desired and awaited good news, Saruman would have perceived the terror and the mental and physical exhaustion of his favourite traitor without any doubt. But he was so wrought up by the succession of events, that his terror and inner exhaustion simply escaped him. The news, coming on top of so many bad and strange events, simply filled his horizon.

But Saruman wanted news from the court, and Grima was able to inform him of the ugly scene with Theodred and Eomer. So Saruman decided to kill Thèoden's son and the heir. There were no clear heirs after Theodred and Eomer, and if they died and Grima married Ewoyn, he could have stepped into the throne, to Saruman's great advantage. So the cold and arrogant mind in Isengard decreed Theodred's death; and then Theoden's death; and, last of the three, Eomer. Doom hung over Theoden's unheeding court.