When spring returned to Middle-earth, Gràinne and Irimë departed the Ar Muin and returned to Eregion, where Irimë sought an audience with Celembrimbor to inform him of her presage that some great evil was returning to the Circles of the World.  Celembrimbor received his great aunt and Gràinne during counsel with Annatar the Fair, Lord of Gifts.  Irimë informed them that the kelvar of the deep had told her that a dark evil was rising in the subterranean recesses of Arda.  Celembrimbor had felt no change in the world and Annatar suggested that her empathy as a poet with the strong emotions of living things may be coloring her perception and exaggerating the severity of the petty forebodings of the low beasts.

 

While Celembrimbor’s incredulity at Irimë’s portent sent her away crestfallen, Gràinne later confronted Annatar at his smithy, voicing her disdain of his dismissal of Irimë.  Annatar said much in an attempt to assuage Gràinne’s ire, but she left his company no less displeased with him.  Gràinne returned to Irimë urging her to begin their long anticipated journey to the North to find Gràinne’s father Azulzîr, but ere they departed, Annatar convinced Irimë to tarry longer in Eregion so they could enjoy each other’s company.  To assuage Gràinne’s chagrin at the delay, Irimë crafted her a suit of armor with a stylized motif of Annatar’s visage emblazoned across it.  Gràinne, in resentment of the Lord of Gifts, rejected the armor, and Irimë, in an abundance of patience, re-forged it with a new, lupine, motif, and the two set out, after several months’ delay, on their journey.

 

Irimë led Gràinne along the Sirannon tributary to the Misty Mountains, where they sought the gates of Khazad-dûm in the hopes that Durin III’s folk would take them safely North through the caverns of Moria.  After a dangerous ascent into the peaks of the mountains and long travel across the icy summits, they found an enormous sealed gate too great to pass.  At Irimë’s urging, they waited for the sun to wane, whereupon its fading light reflected off the iron to reveal a glowing inscription in the Tengwar script that read, in Sindarin, “Pass boldly through the Gates of Durin ere the sun sets on the Empire of the Dwarves.”  Gràinne contemplated the riddle, and, soon realizing its meaning, strode through the bars of the gates, turned temporarily insubstantial by the magic of the sun, and into the realm of the Dwarves of the Misty Mountains . . .