Aule's Dilemma by Uvatha the Horseman  

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Sauron's Trial

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The Circle of Doom - Late Second Age

Aulë stayed away from Council meetings if he could. To him, they meant wearing stiff ceremonial robes and sitting through hours of aimless talk, while his work in the Forge wasn't getting done.

But on this occasion, Lord Manwë decreed that all twelve Council members must attend. The attempt to invade Valinor, followed by the Drowning of Númenor in retaliation, had just happened. The Council of Valar assembled to discuss it.

The Invasion was a terrible thing, but it was more of an insult than an actual threat. They hadn't made it further than the beach. They never got close to Valmar, which was far inland. The Forge was unaffected. Aulë showed up to the Council of Doom with a notebook, prepared to feign taking notes while working on his current project.

Most of the meeting was about the Invasion and the subsequent Sundering of the sea, which made Arda almost inaccessible. Two or three of the Valar spent most of their time in Arda, including Yavanna. This would make it harder for them to cross the ocean.

Then came the bad part. There was substantial evidence that Mairon, whom the Elves called Sauron, had planned the Invasion and had double-dared the Númenorian king to lead it. Not only that, but in the year before the Invasion, he'd committed atrocities: the murder of political opponents, blasphemy, and human sacrifice.

     It couldn't be. It was exaggerated. It must have been someone else.

Aulë had heard enough. He got to his feet, ready to storm out. His notebook slid from his lap and hit the floor.

Lord Manwë's voice was like a thunderclap. "Sit down. He's one of yours. You need to hear this."

Aulë sat. There was more, including torturing his closest friend to death. It was Melkor's fault; it had to be. But Melkor was gone. Mairon had become more dangerous than he'd ever been as Melkor's servant.

Aulë felt like such a fool. He knew there was talk. He also knew he'd made an effort to avoid hearing it, or if he did, to explain it away. All these years of missing Mairon and hoping he'd come home, and in all that time, he never let himself realize how much his servant had changed.

Manwë proposed the Council declare Mairon ineligible for pardon if he ever returned, either on his own or as a prisoner. There was talk of the Pit, but Aulë had stopped listening by then. It was overwhelming.

The Council took a vote. The first round yielded eleven 'Ayes' and one 'Abstain'. Lord Manwë wanted the vote to be unanimous. Yavanna leaned over and whispered, "The sentence is in absentia; it isn't real. Think of it as a strongly worded criticism." On the next round, with great reluctance, Aulë raised his hand, and Manwë got his twelve votes.

Even in the heat of summer, Aulë felt ice cold. He seemed to watch himself from afar, as if the other members were tiny and their speech muffled.

When it was over, Aulë walked home with his wife in silence. Yavanna worried about how she would cross the ocean to tend to her woodlands and meadows, and all the animals, now that Arda and Valinor were sundered.

Aulë, lost in disbelief and anger, barely heard. He interrupted her, "I don't know him anymore."

The Mansions of Aulë - Late Second Age

The Council meeting Aulë thought of as Mairon's Trial had just ended. He and Yavanna were walking home together.

His thoughts were whirling. He felt numb, filled with disbelief. Everything he knew from his own personal experience was a lie. The non-feelings held off a wall of rage so intense it frightened him. It hadn't hit yet, but it would.

He loved Mairon. He invested more time in Mairon than in his other apprentices, and Mairon's departure deeply hurt him. Aulë never guessed his favorite would be a monster.

They reached the Mansions. The sky was turning dark, and the brighter stars had just come out. Yavanna took his arm. "Come inside to dinner. We're late, but I'm sure they've saved something for us."

Aulë wasn't hungry. "Go on ahead. I'll come in when I'm ready."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

Yavanna nodded. She went into the house and left him standing in the courtyard.

Aulë entered the Forge. The workday ended, and Aulë found the Forge deserted. Mairon's space on the workbench was as it had been the day he left, pieces of an unfinished project on the wooden surface, a row of hammers in the tool rack behind it, a row of tongs hanging from a bar below.

Aulë swept the pieces onto the floor. The larger ones hit with the paving stones and the edge was dented. Something small and round rolled under the hearth, and it disappeared.

He tore the sketch pinned to the wall showing what the piece would be. The fragile thing was once so precious, so treasured for long years. He crumpled it into a ball and dropped it in the fire, then watched as the flames consumed it.

Aulë found a burlap sack and gathered up all the pieces he could find. He added to it all the specialized tools that looked like Mairon's work - jigs and mandrels and eye punches. Fine sand for welding, beeswax to prevent rust. His maker's mark. His favorite hammer. A specialized pair of tongs he'd made for a onetime project. Anything that looked like Mairon's went into the sack.

He went outside, well into the field where sheep grazed a distance away. He willed it and the ground made a low, deep rumbling which set the dogs to barking. The once-solid ground became uncertain underfoot, like the deck of a ship. A crack opened in the earth with no visible bottom.

He held the sack over the crevasse and emptied the contents into it. Metallic pieces struck rocks and outcroppings on their way down. The pieces banged against each other as they fell, and then went quiet when they had fallen as far as they were going to.

Aulë stepped back and laid the enchantment to close the split ground. The pieces would surely be crushed and flattened. If unearthed, there would be nothing to recover but twisted scrap metal.

His people were running out of the dining hall. "Master Aulë, the chandeliers are swinging on their chains so hard, some of the flames went out. And the pots in the kitchen are dancing on their hooks."

The tremors died down to an occasional vibration, more sensed than felt. Fine, abrasive dust hung over the place where the crack had been, stinging his eyes. He ran the back of his hand over his eyes before turning to face them.

"Go back inside. You earth spirits should know that the Earth is a living thing. A little tremor shouldn't surprise you."

He found a quiet place outdoors to sit in the gathering twilight, watching the first stars appear. He felt numb. He could normally put things right, but this was beyond fixing.

He came to bed late. Yavanna stirred beside him, but didn't wake. He was glad. She would ask him what was wrong, and he didn't want to talk about it.

Amid restless dreams in the small hours of morning, Aulë remembered a small trinket Mairon had made when he was just beginning to learn the craft.

It was a tendril of iron, a stem with a leaf. It looked like the work of a child. The stem was too thick or too thin, and the veins on the leaf aspired to be symmetrical, but failed. It was the first thing Mairon had ever made. He was proud of it and had saved it as a souvenir. For as long as Aulë could remember, the gawky leaf had a place somewhere on his workbench.

In the fury of disillusionment, Aulë had been determined to destroy every reminder of his now-disowned servant. But now that he'd calmed down, it seemed terribly important to save that one thing, a memento from before it all went bad.

When it was just getting light, Aulë went to the Forge and stood before the now-stripped workspace. There was a wooden surface with nothing on it, empty tool racks, a slate for chalk drawings, wiped clean, above an empty shelf. Nothing remained.