Nine Mortal Men (II): The Ban of the Valar
an excerpt

He was an arresting man, dyed black hair barely concealing red roots and a closely cropped beard the color of flame. He wore thin black gloves, not to hide the Ring; for he wore it openly on the glove of his right hand—and indeed, it seemed to have been sized to wear in this fashion. The black leather insulated the fire that was shut up in his bones. When he laid his hand on you, on your head or your shoulder, you could feel the heat of it, burning you, burning up inside of you, like an extension of the charisma that defined his being.
Besides the gloves, he dressed in black leather all over, closely fitting, but not skin-tight. Over this, he donned a robe of black silk, red inside. It did little to keep the elements off him, but it swirled dramatically when he walked. The red silk accentuated every move so that, even from thousands of feet away, he looked like a little fire devil gesturing about his head as he talked. Indeed, when he spoke, throngs swarmed about him, throngs that could fill a stadium thousands of feet wide.
Frankly, his delusions of grandeur never impressed me. I was more interested in what he knew about the Experiments.

I’d never seen Sauron up close until after Melkor was vanquished. That’s when I noticed the roots. The other thing that struck me was his eyes. They literally startled me.
(Sauron has blue eyes?)
He seemed a bit mentally unstable.
“Anfas!” he called me, clapping me on both shoulders the moment he laid eyes upon me. He uttered the old Elvish greeting: “A star shines upon the hour of our meeting.”
I backed away. I had never been called anything but my mother-name, Dairon, or my title-name, Fauglir; and few people if anyone knew the word Anfas. It was the title-name of an ancient dragon, a servant in the Inner Circle of Morgoth. “Anfas” became his right-hand man; though the title tended to change hands every time someone crossed him. I had never been called this before.
With shaking hands, I held the clipboard protectively in front of my chest, pen in hand.
“I understand you were an intimate of the late Morgoth Bauglir,” I said, deliberately licking the pen-nib. I could feel a blot of ink get on my lip, and I tried to wipe it away with my pinky. Nothing black came off on my fingers, which meant I hadn’t got it. I felt terribly self-conscious with those blue eyes staring right through me.
“Many things has the Darkness shown me of late,” he said. “You are destined for greatness, destined for power. You are to be one of the Chosen Ones.” He made the pronouncement as banally as if he were predicting a clear sky. I felt a chill run up my spine.
Whatever.
“From what I hear, you are skilled in the art of shape-shifting,” I went on, rubbing my lip again. Why couldn’t I get it off? “I’d like to learn from you.”
Sauron sized me up slowly, those blazing eyes canvassing every inch of my body the way one girl stares up another on her first day of high school. I stood taller. When he was done, I waited for his answer, as coolly as I could under the circumstances. He backed off and seemed a little intimidated.
“What would a decrepit Elf like you learn from me?” he asked in a tone that was more subdued.
I smiled. I had got the upper hand now.
“Anything you can teach me.”
A noise sounded outside our meeting place. Sauron looked about, suddenly. He had the look of a hare that is suddenly aware of its imminent danger from all sides. Every muscle in his body tensed. Then that hot hand grabbed my wrist and squeezed it.
“We’re not safe here,” he said.
And all I thought at that minute, besides the fact that I would have blisters before he decided to let me go, was: Oh, please.

Looking back: I had a bad sense about this guy. It was more than his eccentricity that irritated me; there was something about him I didn’t like and continued to dislike, for quite a long time. I was blinded by my own self-interest. And so, I blame myself entirely for what was to follow.
Perhaps blame is too strong a word. After all, you can’t really foresee the future based on an icky feeling about somebody you’ve barely met. What I truly regret is the fact that I buried that feeling, not because I thought it was incorrect, but because I had other things on my mind at the time.
Important things, like staying alive.
I don’t think that would have been an issue, had I realized how bad it could get.