The Complete Tolkien Companion (86 page)

‘Yet nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so.'
5
In his origins, he was one of the divine Ainur, of the race called Maiar; and he served the Vala Aulë, and learned great craft from him. (
Sauron
is a later name given to him by the High-elves in their own language, and means ‘the Abhorred', while the Grey-elves knew him as
Gorthaur
‘the Cruel'.) But in earliest times he relinquished his labours with Aulë the Smith, and transferred his allegiance to Melkor; and when Melkor first began to devise evil in Arda, long before the Elves awoke in Cuiviénen, Sauron was already his most accomplished, powerful and valuable servant. Great service he rendered to Melkor – and continued to render while Melkor ruled Middle-earth, acting as cruelly towards Elves and Men as his Master had ever done, though at first with less power to command.

His name first appears in records at the time of the Dagor Bragollach, when his armies of orcs and werewolves captured the tower of Minas Tirith on Tol Sirion that Finrod had built; and here for a while he dwelled, in
Tol-in-Gaurhoth
(as the island was renamed by the Eldar; it means ‘Isle of Werewolves'), the Lieutenant of Morgoth (as Melkor was now known). Yet long before this he had been the first Captain of Angband. At the time of its building, this underworld realm was but a western bastion of Utumno, and Sauron was its castellain. But then the Valar came to Middle-earth and fought the Battle of the Powers against Morgoth, and took him prisoner back to Valinor; but Sauron was overlooked, and escaped the doom of imprisonment. And by the time of the Bragollach he was become an evil lord of great power, second in the world only to Morgoth himself. Sauron it was who devised the ending of the outlaws of Dorthonion (
see
GORLIM THE UNHAPPY
); and he is remembered by the Elves as the slayer of Finrod Felagund.

At all events, the Servant survived where the Master did not, and with the coming of the Host of the Valar the cause of Evil in the First Age was ended. So great was the destruction wrought among Morgoth's many servants that for a while the Eldar believed that Evil had been ended for ever. Morgoth himself was cast for ever into outer Darkness. But Sauron somehow survived the Breaking of Thangorodrim; and when he was summoned, by Eonwë captain of the Host of Valinor, to return to the Blessed Realm and there accept judgement on his crimes – likely as he well knew to involve imprisonment for many Ages in the Halls of Mandos – he refused.

Remaining therefore in Middle-earth – where the cause of Evil was now laid low indeed – Sauron after a time became aware of the growing power of Númenor across the Seas, and of the hosts of his former enemies who still dwelt in the westlands of Middle-earth, a bar between him and his domination over mortal lands.

Alarmed by the strength of both the Elves and the Númenoreans, Sauron then began to seek for a land which he could fortify after the manner of Angband of old, where he could build a new Thangorodrim as a fortress of his might. Such a land lay empty, away to the south and east, behind impassable mountain-walls, and in its centre stood a mighty volcano, whose age-old fires had covered the plain round about with layer upon layer of dark ash. This forsaken land Sauron took for his own, and it was named
Mordor,
the ‘Black-land'. There he built his Dark Tower, the Barad-dûr, and there he dwelt throughout the Second Age.

Although in later years Sauron's appearance grew hateful – so that his power then lay in terror alone – at this time he was still able to appear fair of aspect and form. Accordingly, he determined upon treachery and deceit as his chief weapons, offering knowledge, wearing a fair form and bearing fair names, many of them signifying reverence for Aulë. Gil-galad, Elven-king of Lindon, whom Sauron first approached, nonetheless refused all dealings with him. Not so with other Elves: Celebrimbor of Eregion, greatest of surviving craftsmen, was less wise in these matters than Gil-galad and made a covenant with Sauron, whereby each provided the other with knowledge. Together they began to forge the Rings of Power.

It was by this means that Sauron of Mordor made himself supreme in Middle-earth for the remainder of the Second Age. He aided the Elven-smiths in their great task, and secretly wrought the One Ring to rule all the other rings which then passed under his control – so long as their owners wore them. This brought at last the revelation of his true nature, and the Elves made war upon him. Too late: his strength was already greater than theirs, and Eregion was overrun, and Celebrimbor slain. Only Gil-galad held out – and even he would have been defeated had not aid arrived from Númenor in the nick of time. In this way the Edain of Númenor renewed their ancestral alliance with the Elves – and so gained for themselves the chief hatred of the Lord of the Rings. Sauron was forced to withdraw from Eriador and turn his interests eastward, for strong though he was, his power did not compare with that of Númenor, and he could wait. Nonetheless, his writ ran throughout most of Middle-earth for the remainder of the Second Age, and many peoples endured the full weight of his tyranny.

Yet all the time the island-realm of Númenor continued to grow in strength over the horizon, and the day of their second clash drew nearer. In 3261 the long-expected fleets appeared off Umbar, but so great was the power of the host led by Ar-Pharazôn the Golden that Sauron's own armies melted away and he was left defenceless.

Yet not all his skills deserted him. Perceiving that the King of Númenor was a vain man, Sauron humbled himself and appealed to the mercy (and the pride) of Pharazôn, who did not make an end of him but carried him back, a prisoner, to Númenor. There Sauron's old gifts for dominance and betrayal quickly reasserted themselves; he made himself Pharazôn's chief counsellor and began to complete the process of corruption that the Númenoreans of the Kings' Party had already long developed. He introduced a cult of the Dark and the name of Morgoth was spoken with awe in the high places of Númenor – while evil sacrifices were made, burnt offerings to Sauron's former Master. In every sense, Númenor edged closer to the abyss under Sauron's wicked tutelage.

He had been captive less than fifty years when, at his instigation, an ageing Ar-Pharazôn gave orders for the assembly of the Great Armament. In 3319 this host put to sea and sailed into the West, to give battle for the Undying Lands.

In the ensuing downfall of Númenor, Sauron's mortal body was destroyed, but his spirit survived and fled back to Middle-earth, shapeless and vengeful. He was never again able to appear in a pleasing form, but instead became the Dark Lord, terrible of aspect, black and burning hot, with a single lidless Eye ‘rimmed with fire … glazed, yellow as a cat's … and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing'.
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Hiding in Mordor for a while, he learned that a remnant of the Númenoreans had escaped him and were even then building mighty realms-in-exile upon his borders. Mustering his dispersed armies with furious speed, Sauron struck, purposing to sweep the newcomers into the Sea; in 3429 Second Age he came across the Pass of Cirith Ungol, capturing Minas Ithil and driving the Dúnedain back across the Anduin. But once more he had underestimated his foes: they made alliance against him and broke his armies, and laid siege to the Dark Tower itself; and in final combat with Gil-galad and Elendil, Sauron was cast down and his Ring was taken from him.

For the first thousand years of the Third Age Sauron slept and the westlands had peace from him. But slowly he began to take shape once more, though at this time he was too weak to recapture Mordor, which was essential to his greater purposes but which was closely guarded by the Dúnedain of Gondor. Instead he raised the smaller fortress of Dol Guldur on a hill in the southern reaches of Greenwood the Great. There he began to hatch his plots once more. Evil stirred in the Forest; Orcs and Trolls reappeared in great numbers, and wolves howled on its borders. Greenwood was renamed Mirkwood and the power of ‘the Necromancer' of Dol Guldur was spoken of with dread. In the meantime, desiring to strike at his enemies but seeing no hope at that time in an assault upon Gondor (then at the summit of its power), Sauron sent his chief servant, the Lord of the Ringwraiths, northwards into Eriador with the purpose of destroying the North-kingdom of the Dúnedain. How this task was faithfully carried through to a fearful conclusion is told elsewhere (
see
ANGMAR
). Indeed, for most of the Third Age this most terrible servant worked assiduously on his Master's behalf. The eventual destruction of the North-kingdom freed Sauron and his servants to work for the downfall of Gondor, and the weakening of the South-kingdom allowed Mordor to be reopened and occupied by the Nazgûl.

Yet throughout much of the Third Age Sauron continued to engage in policies of secrecy and concealment. He lay hidden in Dol Guldur, creating the grand designs while his servants harried his foes, growing ever more powerful even while the Wise debated whether or not he had awakened at all. Above everything else he desired to recover the Ruling Ring, for by the fact of his own existence Sauron knew it had not been destroyed; and to this end he bent all his guile during the remaining years of the Age. In the end he was driven from Dol Guldur before his spies could discover the Ring's whereabouts, and soon afterwards he came openly to Mordor once more and proclaimed himself. However, being cautious, and wishing this time to be certain of victory before striking, the Dark Lord forbore to attack his foes until the Ring should come within his grasp. But his enemies (who indeed, as he feared, possessed his Ring), made their own moves even while he hesitated: and in the final campaign that was made against him Sauron's armies were defeated in the hour of victory, his plans were brought to nothing, his servants were destroyed, the Dark Tower was cast down – and the Ruling Ring itself, the fount of all his hopes, was melted in the Fires of Mount Doom. So ended the Third Age, and so passed the power of Sauron the Great. He was cast into the void for ever and the fear of his dominion was lifted from the World.

Sauron's Road
– The causeway which ran from the western gate of the Dark Tower across the reeking plains of Gorgoroth to Orodruin, the Fire-mountain, heart of Sauron's realm. It was built during the early Second Age to enable Sauron to gain access to the Sammath Naur, the ‘Chambers of Fire' which he had delved into the side of the volcano's smouldering cone.

Scary
– A village in the Eastfarthing of the Shire.

Scatha the Worm
– One of the great Dragons of the Third Age, who dwelt in the Grey Mountains at the time of the Dwarves' expulsion from Moria (1981). Little is recorded of this Worm, save that, like all his breed, he was greedy and cruel; and he possessed a large hoard taken by force from the Dwarves. He was eventually slain by Fram son of Frumgar of the Men of Éothéod, who thus won himself great riches. Unfortunately, the subsequent disposition of Scatha's hoard became a source of bitter dispute between Fram and the Dwarves, who claimed the treasure. Fram insulted the rival claimants and they slew him in return.

Sceptre of Annúminas
– The chief symbol of the High-kingship of the Númenorean Realms in Exile. By the end of the Third Age, the Sceptre was the single most ancient object fashioned by Men's hands then in existence, being in origin the Silver Rod of the Lords of Andúnië in Númenor during the Second Age, and therefore over five thousand years old at the time of the War of the Ring.

After the death of Elendil, who brought it to Middle-earth, the Sceptre was kept at his Northern capital of Annúminas beside Lake Evendim in Eriador; but after the final fall of the North-kingdom, it was given into the safekeeping of Master Elrond of Rivendell, together with the other treasures of Elendil's House. Elrond surrendered it to King Elessar (Aragorn II) after the War of the Ring, to be the symbol of the Reunited Kingdom.

Note:
a Sceptre was also the supreme symbol of royalty in Númenor; this tradition was maintained in Arnor but not in Gondor, where the Kings' token was the Silver Crown.

Scroll of Kings
– The manuscript wherein was inscribed the list of the names of the Kings of Númenor; it was kept in Armenelos, the chief city of that land. By tradition, all writing on that scroll was in the High-elven tongue, even in latter days.

‘The Sea-bell'
– An odd and decidedly disturbing Shire-poem, No. 15 in the
Adventures of Tom Bombadil
collection. It has been closely associated with Frodo Baggins, having been at some point subtitled
Frodo's Dreme
– though its dating seems to make it unlikely to have been composed by him. Nonetheless, the unknown verse-maker displayed surprising empathy with the Ring-bearer and the poem seems to provide an insight into the despairing dreams which visited Frodo during his last two years in the Shire. It is, of course, quite possible that ‘The Sea-bell' was actually written by Frodo, and that the manuscript was later discovered by a member of the Fairbairn family (who maintained custody of the Red Book of Westmarch during the Fourth Age), and subsequently copied directly into the Red Book itself. In which case the meaning of the poem becomes suddenly and chillingly more clear. The narrator takes a strange journey over Sea, where he finds to his anger that everything seems beyond his reach: he is unacceptable in the Undying Lands, and all flee at his approach. Tarrying there nonetheless, he grows old and mad – and still no one speaks to him. In the end, he forsakes the West, having found no refuge, and returns to mortal lands. But he has become a ghost, and has no substance in the world of Men; and so he is doomed to wander for ever, haunted and alone. If Frodo was in truth visited by such dreams, then his final passing over Sea must have been blessed indeed.

Sea-elves
– The
FALMARI
.