Salgant hadn’t expected to wake up again. He had spent the start of the battle chasing after Tuor, full of the horrified knowledge that he’d just set off a Kinslaying and ensured the death of at least one friend, but neither a crippled leg nor a terrified palfrey lent themselves to speed, and he’d been cornered with only a few members of the Mole and Wing that he’d shouted into rallying together when the walls began falling and the orcs came for them.
Salgant’s men, such as they were, had kept the orcs busy long enough for Salgant to Sing the creatures out of the courtyard they’d found themselves in. Some had even survived the first Balrog’s appearance, he thought, but Salgant’s concentration had become absolute when the second Balrog joined the struggle. The third had been his undoing entirely, and when Salgant’s voice finally gave out, he had seen no other living beings in the destroyed courtyard. Not that he’d had much time to look before he collapsed.
Waking up in the same battered body, rather than the Halls of Mandos, was not in any future he’d anticipated.
A black-clawed foot kicked the elf in his side.
“On your feet.” The balrog rumbled, filling the cell with the reek of hot metal. She was small for her kind, but still loomed too huge for the scale of the room, crouching and furled and in obvious discomfort. “UP, you tub of seal-lard, before I drag you out!”
Beyond the door waited an escort of orc jailers, eyeing the captive with a mix of curiosity and wariness, shackles and a gag at the ready.
“One note out of you and you’ll have to answer Sauron in writing, because your tongue will be hanging from a hook on my belt, understand?” she hissed, her breath smoking. “To think a little runt like you held off two of my brothers… If they’d been free to join the battle at the Fountain, Gothmog might still be alive. So give me one excuse to kill you on the way up the stairs, ‘hína, and the lieutenant will need to find himself another prisoner to question.”
She chuckled, and the outline of her jagged grin glowed like the inside of a furnace. “There are a lot of stairs.”
___
The Pit of the Iron Hells spiraled miles into the earth, half prison, half mine shaft; its stairway chiseled roughly out of the black rock with no regularity or rails to keep one from tumbling into the endless dark. To climb the stairs from top to bottom would take a man a day or more to reach the surface, if he did not rest or tire. The orcs and other guards had ways of ascending vertically by means of pulleys and lifts, but the prisoners working in the deeps made the climb on foot each day, when they were herded back to their cells.
It was lucky then that Salgant had been held near the surface in one of the less remote dungeons, or Sauron would have been waiting a long time to begin his interrogation.
When the balrog dumped the minor lord of Gondolin onto the floor of his chamber he noticed the elf was limping, and wondered if that had been a result of the climb or of a less recent injury.
“Sit, please,” the maia gestured to a chair, giving the balrog a curt nod of dismissal as his guest oriented himself. “That leg of yours must need a rest.”
The room he’d chosen to meet the unexpected Song master in was ornate and glittering; its walls lined with the polished obsidian ubiquitous to the upper floors of Angband, its sinister fixtures in the shape of serpents and spiderwebs wrought of gold, garnet eyes seeming to wink in the light of the fire which blazed in a maw-shaped hearth. Despite its somewhat grim decor, it was a luxurious change from the pit below and the fortress outside; elegant and impeccably maintained.
“Our source of intelligence notified us of two Song masters in Gondolin,” he did not say Maeglin, though there could be no other informer. “We were unaware there was a third.”
Sauron turned to his guest and captive, his tone neither threatening nor plainly read. “You are Lord Salgant of the House of the Harp. I have not heard of you,” he scrutinized the battered elf, crossing his hands behind his back. “Why have I not heard of you?”
There was a cost to great efforts in Song, and there was a cost to setting your will against Power. Salgant couldn’t have sung a note even if he’d tried. Dignity was a foreign land – he was on the verge of collapsing again, half-blind with exhaustion and shaking. He made no protest at shackles or gag, and no more than grunts of pain as he stumbled after the guard. Sometimes the Balrog dragged him up the steps; sometimes he crawled. It was some shred of fortune that he made it to the offered chair on both feet, but Salgant had no mind to appreciate it.
Just keeping his eyes open was a struggle; Salgant blinked heavily at the opulent room and his interrogator. He should be terrified, and somewhere deep inside he was. But that was far away right now. Defiance – for the sake of Gondolin, and his dead, he should be spitting bile. But he was too exhausted. Even the figure of the Abhorred could not bring his nerves back to life. “I…” he began in a rasping whisper, then coughed. “It was no secret.”
It must have been Maeglin. When he’d gone on that long prospecting trip, and come back different. He had been desperate to bury himself in pleasure as though to escape something chasing at his heels. He hadn’t been surprised to see the red glow on the horizon. He’d had some sort of plan already. Salgant had found him weeping once and Maeglin had refused to say what troubled him. It must have been Maeglin. And yet Salgant’s heart cried out that it could not be so. Maeglin had been dour and grim, yes, but he had loved Turgon, loved Idril in whatever misguided form, loved the city that was now fallen. But there was no one else. Maeglin had always suspected Tuor of some treachery, had railed that Hurin’s cries would bring the hunters down on them all. But it had been Maeglin himself who brought Angband to their doorstep.
“No secret inside Gondolin, perhaps,” Sauron paced before the fire, “but for a master of Song nigh equal to Finrod, who Sang a whole battalion into rubble and required no fewer than three Balrogs to subdue– I’d say you were kept very well hidden.”
The maia pulled the stopper from a crystal decanter, pouring clear, iced water into a glass for his guest– the only refreshment he would have seen since his capture. He beckoned for Salgant to drink.
“You are not of the Noldor.” An observation, not a question. Sauron dipped his head in appraisal. “Reports say you Sang in a form of Telerin not heard on the continent since the first rising of the moon.”
A faint smile quirked the corner of his lips. “A rare pearl, then, from the far frozen north. How unexpected.”
Looming somewhat over the seated company, Sauron leaned nearer the elf’s face, inspecting his starlight-limned eyes with a soft grunt of confirmed suspicion.
“I rather wish I’d seen it. It’s been almost fifty years since I last had a proper Song battle.” He clucked his tongue. “Pity. But perhaps I’ll hear you Sing in another capacity soon. The war is won, after all. If you prove amenable to our cause, there is no need for talented individuals such as yourself to remain in irons. My Master affords many opportunities to those who cooperate.”
The implied offer lay open before him, like the glinting rim of the water glass.
Defiance would have had Salgant refuse the water. Practicality and need insisted that he drain the glass, and they won without much struggle. Salgant took the glass with both hands; leaving smears of dirt and soot on the pristine surface. This, he knew, would likely be the last clean water he’d have for some time after he stopped cooperating. It was almost impossible to drink slowly. The chill helped, as did the ice, which Salgant crunched between his teeth and swallowed. He did not speak until the glass was empty.
There did not seem to be much point in arguing about the Power’s observations, or even in panicking as that bigger, stronger form loomed and stared into his eyes. Salgant simply could not muster the energy for fear. Had it been Maeglin who hid Salgant from Angband? It must have been, but he could not dwell on that thought for long. Much good it had done either of them!
“No,” Salgant said at last. His voice was hoarse, would be ruined for days, but no longer clicked and broke in the back of his throat from thirst. “For the pleasure of a more comfortable chain? No.” He should be infuriated at the insult, and somewhere in his heart he was, but he could not reach it.
“Why, that answer was positively Fëanorian!” Sauron laughed, his expression sly as he sat himself across from his guest. “You have been spending too much time with Noldor… Such a typically stubborn and short-sighted response. You served one king by choice, and another before that by no more virtue than being born into their kingdom. This would be little different.”
He refilled the elf’s glass to the brim, but put his hand gently over the top before Salgant could retrieve it, forcing eye contact.
“I will not press you into service. I have no use for an unwilling ambassador who must be kept in check at all hours; you are genuinely free to accept or refuse without fear of retribution. But I urge you to at least consider this offer– at least, do not refuse until you have heard what it entails!”
He slid a finger around the rim of the glass, and the single, pure note it emitted filled the room like siren song. Then he slid it closer to his guest, and leaned back in his own seat.
“Will you hear me out? Or would you prefer to return to your cell to rest?” He gave a quick snort with a wry twist of his lips; “I’d happily offer you a room on the upper floor, but alas, I fear it is only a more ‘comfortable’ prison.”
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