Saruman

Curumo of the people of Aulë

Saruman was a Maia of the people of Aulë, the Smith, and in Valinor he bore the name Curumo, the skilled one. When Manwë called a council to choose emissaries against the returning Sauron, Aulë put Curumo forward and he was the first chosen, and so became the chief of the Istari. Unfinished Tales records that he resented from the beginning the honour paid to Olórin, later Gandalf, and that he took Radagast with him only because Yavanna begged it. Like Sauron, he came of Aulë's following; the love of making and ordering that was their common inheritance was in him from the first.

The White Messenger

Saruman was the first of the five to land at the Grey Havens, around T.A. 1000, and the Elves called him Curunír, the man of skill. He was tall, with black hair and a fair voice, and he wore white; his arrival was noble and his learning vast. He went early into the East with the Blue Wizards and returned alone many centuries later, and thereafter he was the acknowledged head of the order. He became the master of all lore concerning the Rings of Power and the works of Sauron, and he studied the devices of the Enemy so closely that they began to shape his own thought. He did not wander as Gandalf did; he preferred libraries and the company of the great.

The White Council

When the Wise met in council in T.A. 2463 to consider the shadow at Dol Guldur, Saruman was chosen as its head, though Galadriel had wished for Gandalf. His subsequent policy was double. Openly he counselled patience; secretly he had begun to desire the One Ring for himself, believing that it had been lost in the Anduin and that he could find it. In 2851, when Gandalf brought proof that the Necromancer was Sauron and urged an attack, Saruman overruled him, because he wanted Sauron left free to draw the Ring out of hiding where Saruman's own agents could seize it. He began searching the Gladden Fields. Only in 2941, when he learned that Sauron's servants were searching the same river, did he agree to the assault, and Sauron withdrew to Mordor unharmed.

In 2759, on the invitation of the Steward Beren of Gondor, he had taken possession of Isengard and the tower of Orthanc, ostensibly as a guardian of the ring of stone against the Dunlendings. In the tower he found the palantír of Orthanc, and in time he began to use it. At the last meeting of the Council in 2953 he claimed that the Ring had been carried down the river to the Sea and would never be found, and from that year he fortified Isengard as his own domain and set spies in the Shire, where he had learned that Gandalf took an unaccountable interest.

Saruman of Many Colours

The palantír was his undoing. Sooner or later his gaze met the far greater will of Sauron in the stone of Barad-dûr, and though Saruman believed he was playing his own game, he was from then on a servant who imagined himself a rival. In July 3018 Gandalf came to Isengard on Radagast's unwitting summons. Saruman revealed himself, his white robe now shifting with every colour, and proposed that they join Sauron and steer him, or seize the Ring and rule together. Gandalf refused and was imprisoned on the pinnacle of Orthanc until Gwaihir bore him away. Saruman's Riders then hunted the Shire for the Ring alongside Sauron's, and his agents bought the products of the Shire through Lotho Sackville-Baggins.

In Isengard he delved and forged, cut down the trees, and bred a new kind of Orc, the Uruk-hai, who could bear the sun, and mixed the blood of Orcs and Men. His spy Gríma poisoned the mind of Théoden in Edoras. In February 3019 his Uruks slew Théodred at the Fords of Isen, and his raiders took Merry and Pippin from the breaking Fellowship at Amon Hen. On 3 and 4 March his army of ten thousand assaulted Helm's Deep and was destroyed at dawn by the return of Gandalf and Erkenbrand and by the Huorns of Fangorn. In the same hours Treebeard and the Ents tore down Isengard and drowned it, and Saruman was shut in Orthanc.

The broken staff

On 5 March Gandalf, Théoden and their company came to the foot of the tower. Saruman spoke from the balcony with all the persuasion of his voice, nearly winning the Rohirrim, until Gandalf offered him one last chance to leave the tower freely and help the West. He refused with scorn. Gandalf, now the White, cast him out of the order and broke his staff, and from a window above Gríma threw down the palantír, delivering to the West the one thing of value left in Orthanc. Saruman remained a prisoner of the Ents until 15 August, when Treebeard, unable to bear caging a living thing, let him go on his promise never to return.

Sharkey

He went north with Gríma as a beggar and met the returning company on the road, spurning Frodo's pity. In the Shire, where his agents already controlled Lotho, he arrived on 22 September, calling himself Sharkey, and turned the land's ruin into a petty vengeance: trees felled, mills fouled, Hobbits imprisoned. When the four travellers roused the Shire and won the Battle of Bywater on 3 November, they found him at Bag End. Frodo would not let him be killed. As Saruman turned away he was stabbed to death on the doorstep by Gríma, whom he had driven past endurance, and Gríma was shot down by Hobbit archers. A grey mist rose from the body, looked toward the West, and was blown away by a wind from that quarter.

Legacy

Saruman is the Istar who failed most completely, and the histories treat him as a warning: knowledge without pity, order without love, and an emissary who forgot that he had been sent. His works were undone within the year. Isengard became the Treegarth of Orthanc under the Ents, and the trees he had felled were replanted by Sam with Galadriel's gift.

Slain by Gríma Wormtongue at the door of Bag End on November 3, T.A. 3019; his spirit rose as a mist and was dispersed by a wind from the West.