Chapter 358: Blood Sacrifice
Over these years, Kael had also spent long hours within the castle, and at last he succeeded in creating the Room of Requirement.
The Room was, in truth, a chamber of wishes. Within, it reshaped itself to match the needs of whoever entered, providing nearly anything that existed in reality, save for food or living beings, which it could not conjure from nothing.
If someone wanted a chamber piled high with gold, the Room would answer by filling itself with mountains of coins.
Those riches, however, had no existence beyond its walls. The moment they were carried out, they vanished into thin air.
Kael did not tie the Room of Requirement to any fixed corridor or floor. It drifted, appearing in different places throughout the castle as needed.
From within, its doors could open on almost any part of Hogwarts: the kitchens, the house dormitories, the basilisk's chamber, the dragon vault and more.
Even so, he placed strict limits on its use. He could not have students blundering into such places by accident. Only with a particular combination of intent and incantation would the door appear, and only then would the Room show the form requested.
Kael used it as his private laboratory and vault. There he stored the Palantír that held his Horcrux, the Philosopher's Stone, the Diadem of Wisdom, the golden cup and other treasures.
Aside from Arwen, no one knew of the chamber at all. It was a true secret room.
…
Since Saruman's spirit had been swept away and Thrór's Dwarf‑ring destroyed in dragonfire, Mordor had fallen eerily quiet.
There were no armies on the march, no new assaults.
Yet because of Saruman's warning at the last, neither Kael, Gandalf, Elrond, nor any of the others relaxed their guard.
They watched Mordor from afar and fretted over the thought that Sauron might use the sacrificial array to reach Morgoth.
But they could not simply march into Sauron's stronghold to stop him. That road would only hasten the doom they feared.
So they prepared in secret, determined to meet whatever came—stone against flood, wall against storm.
Beneath the shadow of Orodruin, the Mountain of Fire, work went on.
Under the eyes of the Nazgûl and the Black Númenórean sorcerers, countless Orcs laboured on the dead plain. Following plans drawn up long in advance, they shaped the cooled black rock of lava flows into a vast altar.
Around its edges, they raised great carved stones, each one a looming figure with a twisted, snarling face, steeped in evil.
On the surface of the altar, they cut a maze of trenches. Seen from above, the channels formed the lines of a great sigil.
Lava poured from the mountain in rivers, running down into the plains, filling the air with heat and the stench of sulphur. The land looked like the end of the world.
Near the altar, Orcs had sunk an iron pipe into one of those rivers farther upstream, drawing off a branch of molten rock.
At a signal, two burly Orcs swung their hammers and shattered the plug in the pipe. Scalding red lava roared out and surged into the trenches cut across the stone.
Slowly, the channels filled until a blazing red pattern, a lava‑wrought magic circle, burned upon the altar.
Orodruin's fire came straight from the heart of the earth. Its power was great enough to melt the One Ring itself.
As the lava ran through the sigil, the altar seemed to wake. The carved guardians drank in the power of the flows like bottomless pits, and their foul presence deepened.
The mountain answered.
Flames and molten rock burst ever more violently from its throat. Ash boiled into the sky.
The clouds over Mordor, dark at the best of times, thickened into a churning lid. Ash and smoke turned the air as black as midnight.
Upon the altar stood the Witch‑king of Angmar, lord of the Nazgûl. His cold, rasping voice rang over the plain. "Bring them up," he hissed in the Black Speech.
The Orcs milling around the base of the altar drew back, opening a path.
Along it came hundreds of captives, Men and a scattering of Elves, bound in iron chains and driven up the steps by blows and curses.
They were prisoners taken in raids against Gondor, Rohan, Lothlórien, Mirkwood and the lands around.
They had rotted in Mordor's pits, tortured until they were little more than wrecks.
Once, they would have been meat for Shelob in her lair. Now their fates had changed.
Some stumbled in numb resignation. Others begged and struggled. A few still glared in hatred. One by one, they were forced to their knees on the stone slabs that ringed the altar.
An Orc stepped forward, knife in hand. With one savage blow, he struck the first prisoner's head from his shoulders. Blood gushed across the stone.
The Orcs below roared with delight, their bloodlust fully roused. They waved their blades, howling with mad joy.
On the platform, the butchers hurled the headless bodies into the glowing trenches and kicked the severed heads after. Flesh and bone sizzled and vanished beneath the lava.
All the while, the Witch‑king chanted an ancient, poisonous litany, a prayer in a tongue older than Men.
One sacrifice followed another. Human and Elven throats were cut without pause. Blood soaked the altar. Limbs and torsos tumbled into the magma and were gone.
With every life spilled, the sigil grew darker and more violent. The molten lines glared brighter, the power that bled from them thick with destruction.
Overhead, the black clouds swelled and rolled. Lightning flashed within them again and again. Swarms of crows and great bats wheeled above the altar, turning the sky into a whirling shroud of wings.
After hundreds of Men and Elves had died, the Witch‑king's voice cut through the din once more. "Not enough," he rasped. "More."
The pits were empty. There were no more prisoners.
But that did not trouble the Orc captains for long.
In Mordor, there were plenty of Men who had bowed to Sauron: Easterlings, Haradrim, and slaves bred in the Dark Lord's own lands.
At a barked command, thousands of human slaves were hauled to the altar.
They screamed and pleaded, but mercy was not spoken in Mordor. One after another, they fell beneath Orcish blades, their blood feeding the circle.
When more than a thousand had died, the array erupted.
A storm of black smoke and raging flame shot up from the centre. The destruction in it was almost a thing made solid.
The watching Orcs, wild with excitement a moment before, now shrank back, trembling. Their very souls seemed to quail.
The Witch‑king only grew more avid. Red light burned in the emptiness where his eyes had once been. "More," he hissed. "It needs more."
The Orc chieftain nearest him faltered. "Lord," he said, "we have no more Men prepared. To bring more will take time."
"Time we do not have," the Witch‑king snarled. "The sacrifice must not stop."
His gaze swept over the press of Orcs ringed around the altar, then settled. A cold laugh scraped out of him. "There are plenty more here," he said. "Send up the weaklings."
The chieftain hesitated, and a ripple of panic ran through the ranks below. Orchish bodies edged backwards, each one eager to be many steps from the Witch‑king's eye.
The Nazgûl's hand tightened on the hilt of his blade. The other Ringwraiths and the Black Númenórean sorcerers closed in around the chieftain, making it very clear what would happen if he refused.
Survival won.
He barked an order. The Uruk‑hai—Saruman's great Orcs, bred stronger and bolder than the rest—seized the nearest common Orcs and drove their blades into them.
The slaughter began again, but this time, Orc blood flowed.
The fallen were dragged to the altar, beheaded, and cast into the lava trenches like all the rest.
In the end, thousands of Orcs went into the fire.
The array shuddered and changed. Smoke and flame coiled higher, thickening into a pillar. A wave of suffocating darkness rolled outwards, and the skies over Mordor turned a deeper black, as if true night had fallen at last.
Within the roiling cloud, two eyes opened.
They burned like twin furnaces, blazing out with a weight of malice that crushed the breath from every creature on the plain.