The watcher in the water pulled in Irimë and Boldog, and Gràinne dove in after her Elven teacher.  The three worked with unified purpose underwater trying to slay the creature, or at least cause it to release them.  After a desperate battle, Irimë worked herself free of the creature’s giant tentacle and swam hurriedly in the direction of the rising bubbles in search for air.  She surfaced in darkness, the glow of her protean ring the only beacon in the blackness.  She thrashed in the choppy salt water until a silhouette reached out from nearby, neither Gràinne nor Boldog, and began slowly swimming with her arm in his grasp.  She lifted her head and saw dimply the pale neck and half-averted face of her rescuer, and the long black hair that floated from wave to wave.  Meanwhile, underwater, Boldog and Gràinne jointly slew the watcher in the water, and the Orc king, now free, attacked Gràinne.  After a fierce mêlée beneath the waves, Gràinne emerged victorious, both from the violence and the watery depths.  She spotted the glow of Irimë’s ring growing distant, and followed.  The mysterious silhouette dragged Irimë onto a dark, rocky shore, and there, in the pale glow of her ring, she realized that the figure was none other than her son Aranwë, lost in the Fall of Gondolin an Age ago!

 

Irimë followed Aranwë as he lumbered silently inland toward a great, dark hall that rose beyond the beach.  She asked the figure if he was indeed Aranwë and he answered somnolently, in a toneless, indistinct voice, as one bemused by some heavy drug, that he was, and that he vaguely remembered their kinship as if of a distant dream.  Aranwë, or this wight of him, led them into the dark halls and up stairs occupied by countless Ëalar, luminous spirits of Men restlessly bound to this world.  At the top of the stairs, Aranwë brought Irimë and Gràinne to a banquet hall, where a dark priest and his three acolytes supped and bid the newcomers join them.  Tired and hungy, Irimë and Gràinne complied, and ate with their hosts.  The priest identified himself as Búrzghâsh, and introduced the three acolytes as his sons, Vagarn, Vakúl, Uldulûg, the latter no more than a mummified and barely animate being who sat in silent observation of the proceedings.  Vagarn seemed to regard Gràinne with something betwixt desire and curiosity.

 

Búrzghâsh readily answered the inquiries of Irimë and Gràinne and, after they had nearly had their fill, informed them that there were others who would be supping with them.  Several scimitar-wielding wights led before them a savage cannibal, a deep wose whom Búrzghâsh explained was of a tribe who had been swallowed up by Angband long ago and resided in its depths ever since.  Búrzghâsh beckoned the cannibal to the table, and the savage ate of the food and drank of Búrzghâsh's violet wine.  As the cannibal fell into a somnolent stupor, Búrzghâsh spoke in a loud clear voice the single word, “Esrit,” as if calling the name of one that he wished to summon.  Not long after, a large, black mink sprang from a hole in the floor with beaded eyes of flaming yellow that seemed to hold the malign wisdom and malevolence of a demon.  Swiftly, with writhing movements that gave it the air of a furred serpent, it ran forward across the table and leapt upon the cannibal, drinking greedily of the cannibal’s blood until the Man’s mighty thews became strangely sunken, his bones and taut sinews showed starkly beneath wrinkling folds of skin, and his face became like the chapless countenance of death.  After dinner, Búrzghâsh bid his undead servants show their guests to rooms, and for some days, Irimë and Gràinne dwelt in the halls of the necromancers, recuperating from their many battles in Angband with unquiet slumber and diverting themselves with song and sparring, though upon them there rested always a malign malaise as ones who could not wholly awake from some benumbing dream.  More than this, Irimë was held in thralldom by despair for her son Aranwë.  One morning, Vagarn and Vakúl approached Irimë and Gràinne and, in a hushed and covert whisper, as if fearing to be overheard, requested their help with a certain plan:  they hoped to kill their father!