Alan Sisto

You're like, how did they get there so quickly?

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Saruman playing games.

He's playing some 3D chess here.

He is.

But finally Gandalf says, That message brought me hope, for Saruman the White is the greatest of my order.

Radagast is, of course, a worthy wizard, a master of shapes and changes of hue, and he has much lore of herbs and beasts, and birds are especially his friends.

But Saruman has long studied the arts of the enemy himself, and thus we have often been able to forestall him.

It was by the devices of Saruman that we drove him from Durguldur.

It might be that he had found some weapons that would drive back the nine.

"'I will go to Saruman,' I said.'

Then you must go now, said Radagast, for I have wasted time in looking for you, and the days are running short.

I was told to find you before midsummer, and that is now here.

Even if you set out from this spot, you will hardly reach him before the nine discover the land they seek.

So in the text as published, in the actual canonical legendarium, if you want to call it that, it was only after that

arrival to Isengard and the argument and then the imprisonment in Orthanc that Gandalf understood Saruman's treachery.

But I've got a question for you.

Is there a way we can reconcile what Tolkien wrote in that passage about Gandalf suspecting that he wanted the One Ring and

with this?