towers

724 the two towers
furnaces. Iron wheels revolved there endlessly, and hammers
thudded. At night plumes of vapour steamed from the vents,
lit from beneath with red light, or blue, or venomous green.
To the centre all the roads ran between their chains. There
stood a tower of marvellous shape. It was fashioned by the
builders of old, who smoothed the Ring of Isengard, and yet
it seemed a thing not made by the craft of Men, but riven
from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the
hills. A peak and isle of rock it was, black and gleaming hard:
four mighty piers of many-sided stone were welded into one,
but near the summit they opened into gaping horns, their
pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives.
Between them was a narrow space, and there upon a floor of
polished stone, written with strange signs, a man might stand
five hundred feet above the plain. This was Orthanc, the
citadel of Saruman, the name of which had (by design or
chance) a twofold meaning; for in the Elvish speech orthanc
signifies Mount Fang, but in the language of the Mark of old
the Cunning Mind.
A strong place and wonderful was Isengard, and long it
had been beautiful; and there great lords had dwelt, the wardens
of Gondor upon the West, and wise men that watched
the stars. But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting
purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived
– for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook
his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his
own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was
naught, only a little copy, a child’s model or a slave’s flattery,
of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power,
Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and
laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its
immeasurable strength.
This was the stronghold of Saruman, as fame reported it;
for within living memory the men of Rohan had not passed
its gates, save perhaps a few, such as Wormtongue, who came
in secret and told no man what they saw.
* * *