The Lord of the Rings: The Council of Elrond (Part Four)

 

The Tale

Now comes the time for Gandalf to explain why he disappeared from the Shire so many months ago and why Saruman the White, their ring-expert, is not at the Council.

At the end of June Gandalf felt a cloud of anxiety on his mind, a foreboding of danger. He left Frodo to ride out and beat the bounds a bit and find what news he could. Messages get to him while on the border, of war and defeat in Gondor and of the Black Shadow that appeared at Osgiliath. Then not far from Bree to his surprise, he came upon Radagast the Brown, his brother wizard, never a great traveler.

He is on an urgent errand. He tells Gandalf that the Nazgul are abroad, in the guise of riders in black, seeking a land called Shire. Saruman the Wise has sent Radagast to find Gandalf and tell him to come to him if he needs help, but to come at once, or it will be too late. At that Gandalf feels hope, for ‘Saruman has long studied the arts of the Enemy himself’ and might have found some means to drive back the Nine.

Radagast turns to go, but Gandalf delays him for a moment, telling him to send out messages to all the birds and beasts (one of Radagast’s special areas of lore) to bring news of anything to Saruman and Gandalf at Orthanc. Then the brown wizard rides off like all the Nine were after him.

It is late in the day so Gandalf stays at the Prancing Pony in the nearby Bree. He writes a letter to Frodo, entrusts it to the innkeeper Butterbur, then starts the next day.

Weeks later he arrives at Isengard, which is a ring of stones enclosing a valley, and in the middle is a tower of black stone called Orthanc, where Saruman dwells. It is near the Gap of Rohan. The one gate is strongly guarded, but they let Gandalf in as one expected. As the gate closes silently behind him, he is suddenly afraid.

Saruman greets him on the tower’s stairs and leads him into his high chamber. There Gandalf greets him as Saruman the White. The title fills him with anger. He mocks him as Gandalf the Grey, and scoffs at him as a cunning busybody, and asks what brings him from his lurking place in the Shire.

Gandalf says Radagast told him of the return of the Nine, so he sought Saruman’s aid. Saruman mocks the Brown Wizard as a simple fool, with just enough wit to lure Gandalf into the former White Wizard’s trap, for now ‘I am Saruman, the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colors!’ There is indeed a ring on his finger and his robes, which had seemed white, is woven of all colors. It shimmers and bewilders the eye. Gandalf says ‘I liked white better.'

Saruman sneers at the thought, then draws himself up to make a speech. The old powers of the Elves and the men of Numenor is dying. The new power in the East is rising. If he and Gandalf can join it and get a place at the table early, they may in time come to direct its courses and even control it. They have so far striven in vain to produce Knowledge, Rule, and Order with all this nasty free will in the West. Joining with Sauron (whom he never directly names) there would not be ‘any real change in our designs, only in our means.’

Gandalf flatly refuses this plan as Mordor-talk. Saruman’s demeanor changes, and slyly he suggests something else. He realizes that Gandalf knows where this ‘precious thing’ is; if they took the Ruling Ring for themselves the power would pass to them. Gandalf bluntly states there is no us in the matter; only one hand can wield the Ring. And he would not give, he would not even tell Saruman anything more about it, now that he has unmasked himself.

Saruman turns cold and imperious. Since Gandalf will not join with Sauron or Saruman, he will stay locked in Orthanc until he changes his mind, on until the Ruler of the Ring has triumphed and decides his doom. Gandalf is taken and set alone on the pinnacle of Orthanc. From there he can see that the valley of Isengard, once green and fair, is full of pits and forges, and inhabited by wolves and orcs. A dark smoke hovers like a pall over it all. He is imprisoned in a small cold place, like an island in the clouds, with no escape.

‘I saw you!’ cries Frodo, remembering his dream of long ago before he left the Shire. Gandalf replies that it was late in coming, for by then he had escaped.

Saruman’s cunning had not counted on the ‘fool’ Radagast, who, though tricked by the White Wizard, had gone ahead and done as Gandalf asked. The Eagles of the Misty Mountains had gathered much information, seeing the Nazgul and orcs and wolves mustering and passing through the lands. They sent a messenger, Gwaihir the Windlord, to bring the news to Gandalf at Orthanc. Landing on the pinnacle where he sees him standing, at Gandalf’s request the eagle flies him away.

‘How far can you bear me?’ I said to Gwaihir. ‘Many leagues,’ said he, ‘but not to the ends of the earth.’

The eagle lets him down in the nearby land of Rohan, at the court of Edoras, where Gandalf asks the king for a horse. The king will not listen to his warnings about Saruman but bids him take a horse and begone. He chooses the best mount in the land, Shadowfax, and sets off for the North. So quickly does the horse go that although Gandalf leaves Rohan when Frodo left the Shire, he had reached the Shire when Frodo was on the Barrow-downs.

He goes to Hobbiton and speaks to the Gaffer (who not pleased with his new neighbors, the Sackville-Baggins) and finds that Frodo left less than a week before, not right away as his letter had bid him. He came to Crickhollow and finding the broken house and cast-off cloak thinks that Frodo has been captured. He thunders off to Bree to have a word with Butterbur, but finding that the hobbits have left with Aragorn, is so overjoyed he exclaims, ‘May your beer be laid under an enchantment of surpassing excellence for seven years!’

He rides off again but cannot find Frodo and his companions in the wild. Instead he encounters the Nazgul on Weathertop, and he does what he can to draw them off. When he enters the Trollfells, Gandalf sends Shadowfax home as the horse can’t navigate the stones of the hills. The wizard arrives at Rivendell only three days before Frodo.

‘And that, Frodo, is the end of my account. May Elrond and the others forgive the length of it. But such a thing has not happened before, that Gandalf broke tryst and did not come when he promised. An account to the Ring-bearer of so strange an event was required, I think.

‘Well, the Tale is now told, from first to last. Here we all are, and here is the Ring. But we have not yet come any nearer to our purpose. What shall we do with it?’

Bits and Bobs

Saruman’s name and of his fortress are all translated Rohirric (the language of Rohan) words, which are feigned to be the equivalent of Anglo-Saxon. Saruman is the Old English Searu-man (‘man of skill or cunning’); Isengard is ‘the iron yard/enclosure’); and Orthanc is ‘a skillful work’. It is logical that these are local names; the place lies near to Rohan.

Saruman himself was originally one of the Maiar of Aule the Smith, as was Sauron in the beginning. He was at first the strongest of the Wizards, which made him too proud in time. His study of ‘the arts of the Enemy’ led him to make his own ring; what its powers might have been is unknown. It almost certainly lost any it might have had with the wizard’s defeat.

Radagast has already briefly appeared in a mention in The Hobbit; he lived at Rhosgobel on the borders of Mirkwood. Beorn considered him a decent fellow, as wizards go. Ruth Noel in The Mythology of Middle-Earth (and later, Douglas Anderson) note the similarity of his name to Radegast, a Slavonic deity ‘whom Grimm associated with Odin.’ (Note the bird.) Radagast gallops his way out of the story and, though mentioned, is never seen personally again.

Saruman remains ‘the White’ throughout the Jackson movies, though his robes get grimier and grimier. The ‘many colors’ are suggested by purple and red in the Bakshi film. The shimmering, changing patterns of the weave suggests Saruman’s own shifty, slippery nature. Both films show some kind of ‘wizard’s battle’ between Gandalf and Saruman; here Gandalf seems to just accept the fact that at the moment Saruman is more powerful than he and is simply imprisoned.

In a later, previously unpublished account, Gandalf escapes just at the moment that the Nazgul come knocking at Saruman’s door, seeking information. In fear, Saruman goes up to release Gandalf, hoping to change sides again and that he will then help him withstand the Nine, only to see him flying away. Thus he loses another chance of redemption, though who knows if he wouldn’t then turn yet again?

Gwaihir himself gives the reason for ‘why they can’t just fly the Ring straight to Mt. Doom.’ We are given a brief introduction to the king of Rohan and to Shadowfax, Chief of the Mearas, noble horses believed to have been brought to Middle-earth by the Vala Orome the Huntsman. We are given an account of Gandalf’s conflicts with scattered members of the Black Riders, explaining the strange marks left at Weathertop.

And now that we’ve had the story of the Ring up to date, they have to decide what to do with it. One small slice of ‘The Council of Elrond’ remains.