Moon Shadow

The white-clad master paces, lordly, in his brooding tower.

Someone to lay my bones honorably to rest? But why would a noble treat with such abominations as now approach?

"My lord, we found the jewellery you sought!" The loathsome creature dumps a sack of mouldering bones, a golden locket, and a sparkling circlet.

My Elendilmir!

"Was there no ring?" The white-robed lord frantically paws through the filthy jumble.

"No, my lord."

Enraged, he hurls the empty locket against the moon-shadowed wall.

Sullen silence.

"And the bones?" ventures another orc. "There's no meat worth gnawing on."

"Feed them to the fires!"

***

2851
Saruman begins to search near the Gladden Fields.

The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix B, The Tale of Years: The Third Age

'But King Elessar ... began the re-ordering of his realm.... Then all the secrets of [Orthanc] were searched. Many [jewels and heirlooms] were found.... Saruman in his degradation had become not a dragon but a jackdaw. At last behind a hidden door ... a steel closet was revealed. ... 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...: the Elendilmir itself ... that ... had been taken by [Elendil] as the token of royalty in the North Kingdom. Every king and the chieftains ... in Arnor had borne the [second] Elendilmir...; but though it was a jewel of great beauty ... it had not the ancientry nor potency of the one that had been lost when Isildur fled into the dark and came back no more. ...

When men considered this secret hoard..., they were dismayed. For it seemed to them that these things ... could not have been found, unless they had been upon Isildur's body when he sank ... Why then ... 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.

Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch 1, The Disaster of the Gladden Fields: The Sources of the Legend of Isildur's Death