Orthanc

The tower

Orthanc rose from the centre of the ring of Isengard like a natural peak, and in a sense it was one: the Men of Númenor had shaped it from four many-sided pillars of black rock which they fused and welded into a single spire. Near the summit the four pillars parted again into sharp horns, and the space between them formed a flat platform where a man might stand, high above the plain, exposed to wind and stars. The tower was said to be five hundred feet tall. The stone was glassy and dark, and marked with strange etched shapes; it did not chip or crack, and later even the Ents, who could crumble the wall of Isengard, could not scratch it.

The only door stood at the top of a flight of twenty-seven steps on the eastern side, opening onto a balcony with a window above it; from there Saruman spoke to the Riders and to Gandalf after the fall of his fortress. The name Orthanc had a double meaning: in the Elvish tongue it meant a forked height, but in the speech of Rohan the same word meant a cunning mind, and both were felt to fit its master.

The palantír

Within the tower was kept one of the seven Seeing-stones brought from Númenor. It had been lodged there by Gondor when Isengard was a royal fortress, and forgotten by the Stewards. Saruman found it and used it, and through it he was found and ensnared by Sauron, who held the master stone in Barad-dûr. When Gríma flung the stone down from the window after the parley, Pippin picked it up, and its loss cost Saruman his last link with the wider war.

The tower was raised by the Númenóreans in the days when Gondor was strong, and Isengard was built around it. As Gondor's reach shrank the tower was locked and its keys kept in Minas Tirith, until the Steward Beren gave them to Saruman in T.A. 2759. Saruman dwelt in Orthanc for two and a half centuries, gathering knowledge of the Rings and slowly turning to his own designs. In July 3018 he held Gandalf captive on the pinnacle, and Gandalf's escape on the eagle Gwaihir in September set the events of the War of the Ring in motion. When the Ents flooded Isengard in March 3019 Saruman fled into the tower with Gríma; there he was confronted by Gandalf and Théoden, refused to repent, and had his staff broken. Treebeard kept him locked inside until late summer, when he released him. After the war King Elessar found within Orthanc the treasures Saruman had hoarded, among them the Elendilmir of Isildur, proof that the wizard had searched the Gladden Fields for the Ring. Elessar kept the tower for the Crown while giving the surrounding vale to the Ents.

Orthanc stood at the exact centre of the mile-wide plain enclosed by the ring-wall of Isengard, with the Misty Mountains looming to the north. After the Ents' flood the tower rose from a shallow lake and then from a young wood.