It had always seemed out of place, hulking above the forest, an isolated mass of stone far from the forest’s other ranges to the north or the snowy Misty Mountain ramparts across the Anduin to the west.  Whether some upwelling from below or, as some would have it, a stray fragment of the violence from Melkor’s raising of the Misty Mountains ages ago, it was the dominating height of the southern forest.

The lands around it had first been home to the elves.  In the days of the Great Journey, there were those who resisted the call to the Undying Lands.  Among them the Nandor in particular had long stayed east of the Anduin, settling in the forests, until Denethor and his people finally made the trek to Beleriand and Doriath.

The sundering of that land at the end of the First Age brought the elves back to the forest.  Oropher reestablished the elven abode in the southern reaches of the forest for a while.  A network of enchanted trails wove through the trees.  Graceful platforms for were built on three small outcrops in the forest that some called the dolmens, places of music and poetry. 

But Oropher became disenchanted with his proximity to Sauron’s growing power in Mordor, the rising influence of Lorien to the west, and the enterprises of the Dwarves in the Misty Mountains.  In successive stages he and his group of Silvan elves withdrew to the north and east, reaching the Old Forest Road, then the foothills of what are now known as the Mountains of Mirkwood, finally arriving north of the Forest River where they made permanent settlement.

With his departure the southern marches of Greenwood were largely deserted, save for the occasional wanderer from Lorien.  The War of the Alliance at the end of the Second Age did little to change things.  Oropher and many of the Silvan elves died in the assault on Barad-Dur.  His son, Thranduil, returned with his people sorely diminished to the northern reaches of the forest, having little interest in the distant south.  The centuries passed.  Gondor waxed and waned, its maximum northern expansion just lapping at the eaves of the forest, but leaving no lasting impression.

Through all these events the brooding mass of Dol Guldur remained indifferent.  Ere the first of the Nandor had laid eyes on it, the interior of the great rock had fractured, whether from some fault of its creation or fissures widened by the seep of centuries of rain.  The north side gaped open from its base in the forest, to a height of two hundred feet.  Inside it was a tumble of large boulders and great slabs of rock under a high dark vault of dripping stone.  The elves had cleared out some of the debris from areas just inside the entrance, but had little enthusiasm or need to address the vast interior deep in shadow.

Then a thousand years into the Third Age, the first signs of activity of a new tenant could be observed.  Small crews of orcs and evil looking swarthy Easterlings began the arduous effort to remove the interior rockfall.  Ropes, pulleys and construction towers built from felled trees massed at the entrance and within, slowly dragging out the cyclopean stones, heaping them on either side of the small dark stream that emerged from the entrance on the north side.  After a hundred years the interior was cleared. 

Then new works were begun.  The crews were larger by now and the air was filled with smoke as ores were smelted into thick bars and heavy locks.  The clash of hammer on stone echoed through the cavernous interior space and continued outside spiraling up the steep rocky face of the big hill to its flat, barren top.   Then the great wains began to arrive from unknown eastern lands, laden with strangely colored, evil smelling powders, casks of black viscous liquors, and grotesque plants and animals confined in stout cages. 

The acrid brimstone of the forge was soon replaced by that of rot, decay, and more exotic mephitis.  There were few firsthand accounts, the ring of woods around Dol Guldur gradually acquiring an unsavory reputation as an ending point for the unwary or solitary wanderer, whether they be man or elf.  Only the east wind carried the news, a hint of the growing shadow, a vague repellant odor in the air wrinkling the nose for a moment, then gone.

In time the product of this dark work began to emerge from the cavern.  The woods immediately around the hill were leveled and the minions of the new master of Dol Guldur could be seen hunched over the bare ground, digging, planting grotesque, misshapen bulbs, grayish saplings mottled and twisted, and greasy vines with small whitish green flowers.  In time other creations from the interior were added as the first plantings grew thick and tangled.  Before long the barren ring around the rocky prominence was a wall of nearly impenetrable night, broken only by carefully maintained trails, guarded by the most loyal of the master’s servants. 

Soon filling the space initially allotted to it, the repellant vegetation went on the march, infiltrating the forest beyond, corrupting it with its pollen, spawning unhealthy hybrids of oak, beech, and fir.  Tendrils of vine probed their way through the treetops and along the ground, their flowers dripping a pale green ichor toxic to natural cover of the forest floor.  Mold spores spread on the wind, initially just a patch of green on a stray branch or two, but soon enveloping the limbs of even the largest trees in a parasitic fungal cloak.

Having created an environment suited to his nature the new master of Dol Guldur now sought to populate it with the creatures he favored.  But the dark bloodlines he had helped create from the distant ages had faded to the edge of dissolution.   It would take time, time for his servants to locate living specimens with some tangible residue of the past, some physical feature that made it an outcast of its kind.  These they would carefully snare and nurture, breeding it with others of similar ilk.

Bats, snakes, wolves, rats, crows, even insects, nothing was too small if it held promise.  Spiders had been an early success, growing suddenly large, feeding voraciously on living hosts, some of which walked on two legs.  A new breed of wolves, wargs as they would called by some, had recently been released to prey along the southern margins of the forest.  They had assisted ably in his most recent encounter.     

It had taken time, but time, and a burning urge for revenge he had in limitless supply.  He could not yet command an empire or take physical form of his own.  But his power was growing, growing as his spirit fed on the evils he was creating and the black hearts of the recruits he seduced to his dark cause, one by one.   The Eye was awake again, plotting, accreting power, secure atop Dol Guldur, setting the wheels into motion, exhorting the Easterlings in their invasions of Gondor, conspiring with the Witch King in the destruction of Arthedain. 

Still he was not yet what he once was.  A crucial part of his strength, the Ring, had been lost, but not destroyed.  It was still out there.  He could feel it the way a man feels a phantom limb years after its has been severed from his body.  No matter, even without it he was already feeling strong, able to affect events, make plans for the future.  That which was lost would be his again.  He would wait, grow strong in anticipation of having it again, then clasp down on the world in a grip of power that would never be loosened.

                                  ---------------------------------------*-------------------------------------

There was night and pain.  A distant confused babble of voices, echoing.  Blurs of memory.  Then a contact, almost imperceptible at first, then becoming regular, insistent, its cold damp relentlessness pulling him up, up out of the blackness.

Eradan’s fingertips went to his forehead, wet with the drip of water from above.  The small movement forced a grunt of pain.  He lay still for a moment, on the edge of consciousness, as if debating whether to simply sink back into oblivion once more.

“Try not to move too much” a gravelly voice advised.

The voice was familiar.  Eradan opened his right eye, the left seemed unwilling to obey for now.  He was sprawled on a rough cold stone surface.  Blinking, he began to find detail in the initial blur.  A small multi-legged insect scuttling past, a set of gray iron bars anchored into the stone.  Then sounds, voices, harsh and base, not human.  He twitched as a defensive rush of adrenaline shot through his body, his right hand instinctively grasping for a mace that was not there.

“Orcs…” the voice commented flatly

Heedless of the pain that wracked his body, Eradan struggled to a sitting position, leaning against a row of bars, his breath coming heavily.  He turned his head slowly to the left, his good eye peering between the bars.  A familiar figure sat opposite him in the dim light behind another set of bars ten feet away.

“Zerephath…” Eradan managed to rasp, his battered face wincing with the effort.

“I told you not to move” the old cavalry veteran smiled, his leathery face swollen with purpling bruises, his nose broken and crusted with dried blood.  He knew it was advice not likely to be taken.

“The others…”

“There has been no sign of them.  Just the two of us in these cages.”

Eradan looked around.  He and Zerephath were the only occupants of perhaps two dozen large prison cells, arrayed in three parallel rows of eight.  They were each about 40 feet square and empty other than a bucket for slops and a heap of grimy rags for bedding.        

The last row of cells backed up against solid stone, the rear wall of what appeared to be a large dimly lit cavern.  In front of them the rough hewn rocky floor sloped gently downward to a narrow trench filled with a dark flowing stream.  Beyond the stream the floor rose to a collection of large, irregular shaped cages and a series of terraces that ended in gloom where the far wall of the cavern met the upsloping floor.

Eradan craned his aching neck upward to eye the cavern’s ceiling, rising to at least two hundred feet and dripping constantly from hundreds of rocky pores.  Its irregular gray surface was splotched with patches of black that resembled dead, rotted leaves.  Easily a dozen apparently empty cylindrical cages hung from chains anchored far up in vertical shafts carved in the dank stone.   Other shafts were vacant, black, holes in the rock from which filth and offal dropped periodically, landing with a viscous splash in the stream below or splatting foully on the bare rock.    Catwalks spanned the high ceiling linking several torch lit tunnels that went deep into unknown warrens in the rock overhead.  Vague hunched figures bustled to and fro on the high spans, some with weapons, others with sacks over their mailed shoulders. 

At the left end of the front row of cages they inhabited, a large opening gaped in the cavern wall.    Bent silhouetted figures emerged from a torchlit tunnel, carrying tools and buckets, en route to nameless tasks on the terraces or the cages on the other side of the cavern.  

Several hundred feet to their right was the main source of light, a narrow opening in the rock where the foul stream exited into the outside world.

Eradan now noticed the smell, a foul mix of rot, feces, and the unmistakable stench of orcs living in crowded quarters.  There was something else too, a strange animal scent, vaguely reptilian, mixed with the distinct odor of sulfur.  Eradan suppressed a cough.

“It takes some getting used to”  Zerephath commented dryly.

“The smell of orcs I know, but the rest…”

Eradan’s reply was interrupted by an unearthly shriek from across the cavern.  They could just make out a large writhing shape violently crashing about inside a tall cage.  It had an orc inside what might have been its mouth, or what was left of an orc.  Several others rushed over, mostly to insure that the cage was secure and they were in no danger.  A large one barked a command and the rest tried to resume their duties.

But it was too late as the commotion had aroused the inhabitants of other cages.  A cacophony of howls, grunts, roars, and other sounds that defied description soon filled the cavern, echoing madly.  Vague hulking shapes battered the gates and walls of their cages, some tearing at them with horns, claws, tusks, others with wriggling appendages or unsettlingly human like hands.  The orcs backed off in confusion, dropping their buckets and tools, fleeing back towards the tunnel, ignoring the commands of their leader.

Up on the terraces things were also beginning to go awry.  As if in response to the melee in the cages, great thick vines rose from the tilled cultivations, black with ghostly white blossoms the size a horse’s head.  The harsh screams of orcs soon followed as they were snared in the vines looping tendrils, slowly crushed and eased towards the expectant blooms, now beginning to flush with red around the edges.  The remaining orcs fled toward the tunnel, some reaching safety, others wailing as a lagging heel was caught in a viny noose of certain death.

Then below them it seemed there was another deeper answering cry, a low rumble that shook the mortices and cores of the rocks themselves.  A moment later a torrent of orcs gushed like panicked beetles from an opening in the granite floor to the right of the last of the caged beasts. They were clearly terrified, trampling each other in an attempt to to be the first to reach the relative safety of their home tunnel.  Fumes began to pour out of the opening, adding to the stench and felling the last of the orcs who gasped, twitching, scrabbling on the ground before dying.

Then all was momentarily silent save for a vanishing echo of orcish fear down the torchlit recesses to their left.

“What hell is this!?” Eradan gasped in astonishment, barely able to breathe.

As if in answer there was the click of claws on stone behind him to the left. He and Zerephath made their way to their feet, swaying, barely able to stand.  A familiar dark shape emerged from behind a rocky outcrop where the cavern wall met the floor in back of the last row of cages.  They backed away warily from the bars as the huge black hound confidently padded towards them, jaws slightly open in a derisive leer, eyes lit with a dull red glow.  Eradan heard its voice inside his head as he had on the battlefield.

“It is home for you, little one until you are ready to return to Gondor and do my bidding”

  The voice was cold, scornful

“My men…where are the rest of my men!” Eradan demanded, ignoring the voice

“As you wish…” the voice mocked. 

Above, Eradan could hear the sound of voices inside one of the tunnels leading off the high ceiling catwalks.  The harsh gutteral of orcs clashed with the shouts of men.  There was a faint creaking sound of chain on cogged wheels.  He looked up.  One of the vacant black holes in the ceiling was now occupied as the base of yet another cage emerged, lowering on a chain, suspended two hundred feet above the cavern floor.  The figure of a man could be seen inside gripping the bars.

Eradan glared at the great hound which merely leered at him and sat lazily on its haunches, then spoke.

“The day grows late…the bats will soon wake to start their evening feeding.  Oh…I forget…you already know my little friends.  They will be very hungry and impatient…very impatient…and very intolerant for intruders to their sleeping area…”

“Let him go! Do you not know who I am! Eradan, son of the Steward of Gondor! You and your ilk will pay dearly for this when my father returns with the full strength of the kingdom!

“Silence! I know full well what you are, little insect.  A minor piece in a great puzzle.  But you do not know to whom you speak…”

“You are some sort of wizard…an evil one to be sure, unlike the others we have knowledge of…Gandalf, Saruman..”

The voice interrupted abruptly, angrily.

“Speak not the names of those fools to me!  They who were idling in lands you can only imagine while I very nearly conquered the world you call home!”

The voice roared inside his head.  Eradan instinctively clasped his hands to his ears to no avail.  Zerephath crouched as if under the weight of a gale.  Then the moment passed.  Eradan stood straight and tall.

“There have been many who have tried to conquer and none have succeeded.  Even the Dark Lord himself was turned back and killed in the youth of our kingdom.”

The hall seemed to echo with laughter, a deep confident mockery, ending in an ugly rasping growl.

“Turned back…yes, with the lucky stroke of that whelp of Arnor whose bones lie at the bottom of the Anduin.  Dead…no.  The Ring still exists in Middle Earth…I can feel its faint distant heartbeat…my heartbeat…But enough of the past! It matters little that you have not the wits to know with whom you converse, only that you know what awaits you.”

“I do not fear you…death has always been a warrior’s ending”

“Death…how simply you men think.  But then again the measure of years of your lives are little more than the flash of an ember in a roaring bonfire to me.  Your death is of no consequence!  If you live, bent to my will and bidding you will return to Gondor and assist its rot from within, weakening it and passing on the weakness to others, making way for my eventual return.  If you resist, you too will hang from the ceiling and the Steward will pass a kingdom onto your feckless brother who dwells upon poetry and books.  Either way Gondor fades a bit more, bereft of its line of kings.

Eradan clenched his fists.  His teeth ground in his jaws in frustration. 

“Ahh that’s better…now we understand.”  The great black hound raised itself up from its haunches and brought its face close the bars of the cage.  The voice was a reptilian whisper now, for Eradan alone.  “…and do not seek to deceive me young fool, for you will only leave for Gondor when you have willingly…eagerly…placed your companion here in the ceiling cage yourself and lowered him to the bats.”

The beast’s eyes glimmered a moment and then it turned away, lazily padding off to a hidden passage behind the rock outcrop from which it had emerged.  There was a vague echo of laughter receding into a tunnel, then silence.  Eradan was pale, trembling with rage.

“What?! What did it say to you” Zerephath shouted, easily reading the emotions beneath the bruises on Eradan’s still proud visage.

Eradan looked away for a moment, breathing heavily, then turned to his trusted lieutenant and longtime friend. 

“What evil always says Zerephath…the same two choices ever offered…death or betrayal”

In the distance to their right the sliver of light where the stream issued from the cavern was dimming now.  Dusk would soon be upon them.  Above on the ceiling what appeared as a black carpet of leaves was now stirring.  A scattered chitter began to build as the bats awakened, their hunger driving them from sleep.  They could hear the fear on the voice of their countryman in the cage above, knowing his fate.