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A/N: What happens to our heroine, you ask?

*giggles madly*

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The Nightmare - Part 15

by Bex

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I probably took longer to wake the second time that someone 'phased' me.

At least, I think I must have. I think part of me already knew I wasn't waking up to anything pleasant. Knew that I was not in Imladris.

As I had that first time, I stirred, on my side, and opened my eyes to see someone else's face, right near mine.

The face was blue-grey, the eyes a feral yellow, the mouth slightly open, revealing darkened fangs. The breath I will not bother to describe.

All this I took in during the few seconds before I sucked in a whooop of air to shriek and scrambled frantically backwards, only to smack my head against stone behind me. I froze, blinking away tears, then gulped air. The face had vanished, the being it belonged to having turned and stalked away from me.

I was on a pallet, in the corner of a stone room. The creature had gone over to a door in the wall. He leaned around the corner and shouted, and guttural as it was, I did understand it: "Inform the Master that the female wakes."

Pulling his head back into the room, he turned to send a glare my way, perhaps out of general principal, before yanking a crude wooden chair from the wall nearby and straddling it, to sit staring menacingly at me.

Ye gods. He was...well...a nightmare. Greasy, lanky shoulder-length hair, leather armor, grayed undertunic, suspiciously-narrowed eyes, pointed ears, scars appearing at various places where his blue-grey skin showed... and apparently the nastiest disposition possible.

I gulped, having yanked as much of the one sheet as I could up protectively around me, and gaped back, the urge to scream fortunately past now that he'd retreated back across the room.

And, given that he was obviously somewhat intelligent, I risked speech: "Who are you?"

He sneered at me, letting out a guttural laugh. "I am Uruk-Hai. I am Martz." He paused to eye me up and down. "You're not too scrawny. Good. When the Master is done with you, perhaps he'll let us eat you."

I blinked. Uruk-Hai. Uruk-Hai.

How to describe the feeling I got when I realized where I must be? It's...just one of those things... Oh, never mind. Either you know what I mean...or you don't.

The Uruk-Hai watched me balefully, the laughed again as I reached out and savagely pinched my own arm. "All of you do that. Hurt yourself. Why not wait? Plenty of hurt later."

I looked up at him, startled. "'All of us'? There are others? What others?!"

His answer was to flash his rotten teeth in an especially unwholesome grin. "They scream good."

Oh, dear Mother of God....... I was trapped in Isengard somewhere. What the hell had happened?

Fortunately, I was spared any more of Martz's sophisticated humour, as the aforementioned 'Master' swept into the room.

Tall, bearded, hawk-nosed, white-haired and robed, and keen eyes of the deepest black. And utterly radiating power.

And I knew I was in even deeper sh*t than I'd realized.

*****

Appearances can be quite deceptive.

For a few moments, my situation seemed to improve. The tall, white-robed man turned and told the guard, a touch of sternness in his tone, that he was to wait outside until needed. After the human-eating, murderous, sadistic creature obeyed, with a surly glance but admirable speed, it was just the old man and myself in the room.

The much less-threatening white-haired old man, his glance bespeaking of wisdom and knowledge. Who carefully laid his staff against the wall near the door and gently moved the chair closer to the middle of the room, part way between me and the doorway, then sat down.

I relaxed the merest fraction, loosening my grip on the sheet I'd pulled around me.

The old man regarded me gravely for a few moments, then smiled faintly.

"You're a very brave young woman, I can see that."

I blinked. His voice was smooth, melodious. A pleasure just to hear.

"I'm sure you must be wondering how it is you came to be here."

I swallowed, my suppressed terror clashing with the calming quality of his words. When I didn't answer, the faintest line appeared between his eyes, and I found myself nodding quickly.

The line went away and he smiled again, approval radiating out from him.

"You are here to help save these lands from the grasp of unspeakable Evil." He paused, perhaps to observe if I were suitably impressed. My eyebrows had both risen of their own accord, which he perhaps took for awe, for he went on. "This is a task only you can do, and thus it is you who have been brought here."

I blinked.

"What is your name, child?" he asked benevolently, everyone's favorite grandfather.

Child. Something in me squirmed - I had been an 'adult' now for some years... But I answered anyway, for to not do so would be rude, and to be rude to this nice old man was inconceivable. "Sarah."

"Sarah." He smiled. "A lovely name. Sarah..." and here his voice turned a notch resolute, "Would you like to help many, many people?"

What was I going to say? No? I nodded, still mostly speechless.

His approval was like the sun's light, a balm, a blessed relief. I let out a faint sigh and my death grip on the sheet loosened yet more. Maybe...maybe it would somehow be all right. Maybe this nightmare would have a happy ending, after all.

The old man nodded and smiled encouragingly. Yes. "It is a very simple thing I ask of you, yet only you can help us in this way. You see, I am a wizard, the head of a Council, the leader of those fighting to save these lands from Evil. All you must do is to let me see some information that I know you carry...inside your mind."

I tensed up again. Wasn't there...something...? Wasn't this...? "W-what information?"

"To you the merest trifle, to us vital information about our future." He leaned forward somewhat, his eyes pleading and kind and resolute all at the same time. His voice lowered slightly, he asked: "Will you help us, Sarah?"

And my eyes met his, and the sincerity in them was too much; too much. And I opened my mouth to say ye--

From down the corridor beyond the door came a short bark of a guttural laugh, an answering snarl.

I startled and broke the eye contact, my tension returning full force as I recalled what was waiting outside. The man before me sat back and regarded me for a few moments before smiling apologetically and getting to his feet. "My pardon; I shall return shortly."

He left the room, and I heard a murmured conversation, then what might have been a yelp of pain, abruptly cut off.

But by the time he returned, I was huddled in the corner again.

I'd remembered where I was, and who this 'kind old man' was.

He was the person who'd betrayed all the trust put in him by the free peoples of Middle Earth, and had those...creatures outside in the hall made. He was a mini Dark-Lord wannabe, and doing a bang-up job of it.

And he'd been working his wiles on me, his hypnotic and voice magics.

I swallowed hard in a dry throat and glanced around the room, the one window to the outside, the door, the chair rungs, anywhere but at him, as he re-seated himself and again bent that benevolent gaze upon me.

"My child?"

I squirmed inwardly at that...that unctuousness. And before I could hold it back, the thought If I were really your child, I'd suicide flashed through my mind.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw his own eyes narrow slightly before resuming his 'grandfather' act.

"Sarah? Why will you not look at me?" So kind...so concerned...

I glanced momentarily at him sidelong, mumbled something about "...nervous", then asked quickly, "What happened to the others?"

"Others? How do you mean?"

"That...Martz. He said there were others."

"Ah. Indeed, we asked others for help as we are asking you; alas, they did not have the knowledge we required. We sent them safely back home, with our thanks."

"Screaming?" I couldn't help myself; it just slipped out.

He bent a piercing gaze upon me. "Screaming? What do you mean, 'screaming'?"

I pointed at the doorway. "He said they 'screamed good.'"

Saruman merely gazed upon me. His expression remained neutral, but his eyes glittered.

I would say...it was probably not a good day to be Martz.

Nor me, of course.

"Faithful as he is, he is of an uncouth sort...and his humour is sadly lacking," he said then.

I narrowed my eyes at him. You had to admit, he was really trying. Which was odd; why was he still playing this game?

"Let me see them, and I'll tell you what you want to know," I lied, stalling for time but hardly able to stomach this any longer.

"See them?" Saruman peered closely at me. "What do you mean, child?"

And I finally lost it. "And I'm not your child, wizard!" I snarled.

Now his eyes glittered at me, but I was past caring. "Spare me your games; I know who you are, and what you want. You can take your nicey-nicey act and shove it up your a--"

"ENOUGH!!" he snapped, and I flinched back at the power in that one burst of irritation. He peered at me from under hooded eyelids. Speculatingly, now. As if he finally saw me.

"You know who I am and what I want? And pray tell, what is that?" His voice had returned to its earlier smoothness...but now with a definite undercurrent. "Where did you come by this information?"

I looked at him uncertainly. A new game? What was going on here? It was as if the kid gloves were finally off, yet he was still playing ignorant...

I looked away. "Let me see the others. The ones Martz mentioned."

When he didn't answer, I glanced back at him, and saw that same speculative gaze. "Yes; you are different from the others," he said, as if to himself. "You have read the book? You know the tale of the One Ring of power?"

I peered back at him suspiciously. "Of course, but why would you--" I stopped. Something very odd was going on here, and I had the horrid feeling I'd just put my foot in it, or was about to put my foot in it...

He nodded. "Ah. And so you believed the lies about me...the way the truth was warped in that telling."

I stared at him. "Lies?"

He seemed to have regained his equilibrium. "Relate to me the tale as you learned it, so that I may know how those weaker men slandered me and my great purpose."

I gawped at him. "Is that why you brought me here, to--" And of course that was when it hit me... like a ton of bricks between the eyes.

He didn't seem to know who I was, that I'd worked alongside his enemies in Imladris - to him, I was just another like the 'others' who he'd somehow drawn here. From Earth! That was how he'd learned of the Ring, in time to try to waylay Frodo before he left the Shire! He'd somehow learned of the story, the 'book', at least enough to shift the storyline as much as he had, independant of the changes I'd caused.

It wasn't me. It wasn't me. It was him. And my own information had in fact countered his own attempts to subvert the 'story'.

Which was in the end, cold comfort.

I was still trapped here in Isengard, with an obsessive, mad wizard, and surrounded by thousands of murderous Uruk-Hai.

~End Part 15~