Aule's Dilemma by Uvatha the Horseman  

---

Aule studies the Ring

---

The Mansions of Aulë - Present Day (TA 3018)

Manwë left with his entourage, and Aulë stood alone in the windowless room. His nails dug into the palms of his hands. The space was quiet except for the popping of embers. He gripped the edges of the workbench, his knuckles white, breathing deep gulps of air through clenched teeth. How could Mairon have done this?

Manwë had played him a rotten trick. But worse, he'd made Aulë think about his lost apprentice, the one he'd disowned after the trial and banished from conscious thought. Or tried to banish from conscious thought. Fragments of memory came unbidden, even after all these years. The incident in the kitchens this morning hadn't helped.

Learning how the Ring was made, and then unmaking it, would take weeks or months of concentrated effort. The whole time, he'd be forced to think about someone he was trying to erase from memory. Aulë had spoken the truth When he told Manwë that he wasn't worried about hurting his former servant. Some part of him wanted his former servant to suffer during the process of being removed from the earth.

Aulë turned his attention to the task before him. The Ring lay on the scarred wooden boards, light from the oil lamp reflecting from its smooth surface. It seemed to breathe like a living thing, its size changing almost imperceptibly. He didn't want to deal with it. He had to deal with it.

"What am I going to do with you?"

Aulë bolted the door of the confined space and returned to his workbench.

He considered how to unmake the Ring. First, he had to figure out how it was made. There wasn't much to go on. Judging from the color, it appeared to be made from something close to pure gold, though he couldn't guess the alloy or if it mattered.

The design was plain, and it had no visible markings. At first glance, it appeared to be more about the enchantments laid on it than its physical or mechanical properties.

Using tongs, he picked up the Ring and dropped it over a mandrel. The Ring slid down to one marking and rested there. He tapped the mandrel to make sure it had slid down as far as it was going to go. He looked away to jot down a note. When he looked back, the Ring had slid further down another to the next lower marking.

The Ring shouldn't need to change size. Mairon had made it for himself, and presumably, always wore it on the same finger. But then, Mairon was a shape-shifter. They all were, but Mairon was better at it than most. The changing size would allow him to wear it when he shifted shape.

Aulë spilled the Ring off the mandrel into the pan of a scale, then added weights until it balanced. A few minutes later, the pan sank unexpectedly. Like any shape-shifter, the Ring changed weight when it changed size.

He picked it up with tongs and returned it to the workbench. A soft, calming voice spoke inside his head.

    Pick me up. I'm smooth, I'm heavy, I would feel warm in your hand.

Aulë leaned closer. He debated for a moment and then tapped it with his finger, but felt nothing. He drew his finger along the smooth band. Still nothing.

    Put me on. You know you want to do it.

Aulë slammed the flat of his hand on the workbench. "Cut the crap!"

The Ring fell silent, apparently frightened into submission.

"Good. Let's be clear about who's in charge." Aulë had had almost the same conversation with its master before.

The hour had grown extremely late. Aulë put the Ring back in the leather pouch Cirdan had left behind. He went out to the shop floor and retrieved the strongbox that held the precious metals used in the Forge, as well as a handful of gemstones. He was the only one who could open it, or even knew where it was kept.

He carried the strongbox into the Vault and opened it. Gold and silver and mithril on their bed of linen gleamed in the lamplight. He dropped the Ring in its leather pouch on top of an open box of emeralds.

Aulë snapped the double locks closed and pushed the strongbox to the small room's furthest corner, behind the brick forge where it couldn't be seen from the door. He felt better about leaving the Ring unwatched once it was locked in the strongbox. He knew it made little sense. The Vault itself was a strongbox, and an extremely good one at that, in that it couldn't be picked up and carried off.

-o-o-o-

Night after night, when the rest of the household was asleep, Aulë returned to the windowless room called the Vault.

He lit the fire in the small hearth and worked the bellows until the flames sprang to life. When the fire was as hot as he could make it, he picked it up with tongs and laid it on the coals. Fiery writing appeared as the Ring heated on the coals. The handwriting was Mairon's, and the words appeared to be those of a Binding spell.

He pulled it out and laid it on the workbench. Initially, he believed the letters were engraved on the gold band. However, after he removed it from the fire and inspected it, he realized they were an inherent part of the metal, a physical manifestation of the Binding spell.

Aulë laid it on the workbench, taking notes as he watched it cool. He wrote down the words but didn't try to capture how the letters were formed. The handwriting didn't matter, the language didn't matter, but the order of the words mattered a great deal.

He put the Ring back in the fire and worked the bellows to bring the fire up as hot as he could make it. The Ring turned orange and then yellow-white. At those temperatures, metal can look almost transparent.

Shadows beneath the surface suggested an inner structure of channels and attachment points in a blurry, uncertain way. He sketched what he thought he saw, though the dimly seen shapes told him little about their function.

After several days of working with it every evening, he could see hints of the writing on the band, even when the Ring was cold. It helped him stay oriented, as it revealed up from down, and showed which quadrant was facing him.

-o-o-o-

The next evening, it occurred to him that the Binding spell was the key. He devised a Binding experiment to observe how the Ring interacted with the other Great Rings. For that, he needed to place a Great Ring close to the One. Cirdan wore one of the Elven rings. Aulë asked around and learned that Cirdan hadn't sailed yet. Aulë summoned him to the Forge.

When Cirdan stood before him, Aulë asked him, "Are you willing to try an experiment?" He explained what he wanted to do.

Cirdan looked doubtful. "My ring is still in Arda. I gave it away."

Aulë dismissed Cirdan and put away the equipment he'd been planning to use. He'd put a lot of effort into this project, but he still didn't know how the Ring had been made. He'd learned as much as could be learned from weighing and measuring and inspecting. He'd taken it as far as he could.

-o-o-o-

The Ring sat on the oiled boards of the workbench. He would learn more if he put it on. Just for a moment, just to learn a little more about how it worked. He stroked its smooth surface, weighing the pros and cons.

    Put me on. You want to do it. It's the only way you'll ever understand me.

He yanked his hand away. That was too close. He shoved the Ring into its leather pouch, taking care not to touch it, and placed it on a high shelf.

It was days before Aulë came back to the secure room. He had an idea. Instead of asking, "How was the Ring made?" he should have asked, "How could it have been made?"

What the Ring was supposed to do. The Ring was made to bind the other Great Rings. How might that be done? The Binding spell was the key. He hadn't been able to experiment with Cirdan's ring, but he could still consider the choice of words in the Binding spell.

Soon after the Ring was forged, Aulë had tried to guess how it had been made. He and Curumo made a game of it, coming up with a few designs that might have worked. Aulë found a few drawings of some of their best ideas among some ancient papers, along with his notes describing the reasoning behind them.

Aulë reviewed their long-ago work, then spread a blank scroll across his desk to map out what he thought might be the inner mechanisms of the Ring. He had to erase and start over several times. What he thought he knew about the Ring was imperfect or contradictory.

He worked on it for days. Notebooks and working sketches covered the top of his desk. Soon, unrolled scrolls, schematic diagrams, and pages of calculations buried every flat surface in the room. The chalkboard filled up with computations and drawings until not a single space remained. He wasn't there yet, but he was sure he was getting close.