As the sun waned, Irimë and Gràinne proceeded beyond the Gates of Durin and through a winding, outdoor path between mountainous crags toward the entrance into the mountain.  Clouds rolled overhead and rain began to fall as the darkness of nightfall descended upon them.  Suddenly, from between rocky outcroppings, crude arrows sped toward them.  Irimë deflected them with her bracers, but Gràinne let them come, using the trajectories of the arrows to discern the location of the bowmen.  She charged into the darkness and, bringing her horse cleaver Mahtarocco to bear, stunned one of the assailants, a large, burly, straw-headed man wearing animal skins.  His compatriots emerged from the shadows, noting in a Dunlendish-like tongue that Gràinne vaguely understood that the two interlopers were “not Orcs.”  Gràinne remembered tales told by Devnaht, the matronly tanner of the Gond, of mountain men living in the peaks far beyond the eastern end of the Gwathlò.  Irimë suggested that if these “Eredrim” were enemies of the Orcs, then they were surely allies of Gràinne and she.  The mountain men explained that they lived among the Misty Mountains in peace with the Dwarves under the mountains, and that the Dwarves had enlisted them to patrol the mountain peaks of late against bands of roving Orcs passing west through the range in the service of one Gorthaur.  Irimë recognized the name as that engraved on the base of the simulacrum they had found the preceding autumn in the cave of the úvano of the dark forest at the western foot of the Misty Mountains.  The mountain men urged Gràinne and Irimë not to travel to the entrance of Khazad-dûm just yet, as the Orc scouts were undoubtedly watching them, their attention surely drawn by the glow of Gràinne’s silima tattoos in the darkness.  Gràinne and Irimë agreed, and joined with the mountain men in confronting the Orcs.

 

As the rain drove heavier on the mountain, Gràinne, Irimë and the mountain men found a narrow pass where they lured the Orcs in an attempt to gain a tactical advantage.  They initiated a charge and their enemy met them at the pass, large purple-skinned Orcs riding enormous Gundabad wargs.  Even Gràinne’s horse cleaver was no match for the thick fur hides of the vicious mounts.  Irimë used her Elven magic to control the flow of the rainfall, making muddy the pass so as to entrap the wargs and their riders.  The mountain men engaged the Orc warband, and their weapons clashed as lightning flashed and thunder sounded around them.  Suddenly, the yellow eyes of the Orcs grew wide and the warriors stayed their blades; the mountain men turned and lowered their spears.  As an enormous shadow passed over the moon, both sides called a retreat, and the Orcs and their wargs scattered back from whence they had come.  The mountain men called to Gràinne and Irimë to run for cover from the “stone giants” as enormous boulders seemingly came crashing into the mountain side under the flickering lightning, causing a landslide that crushed many Orcs and Men.  Gràinne found a safe route under rocky cover, and Irimë, leading her to the path to the West-gate of Moria, spoke the magical password, mellon, that opened the stone doorway that Celembrimbor himself had fashioned for the Dwarves.

 

Under the mountain, Gràinne and Irimë were warmly welcomed by the warden of the West-gate, Durin’s kin Drerin Longbeard, and his deputies Dóin Grimjaw and Freri Greyspike.  The loquacious Drerin seemed surprised to see them, rather than the mountain men sentries, but listened grimly as Irimë revealed the purpose of her visit and recounted the evidence of the rising evil she and Gràinne had been witnessing over the past seasons.  After a feast of roasted meats and Dwarven mead, Drerin brought Gràinne and Irimë before Durin III, King Under the Mountain, who received them hospitably and gifted Gràinne, the first Edain in memory to enter Moria, two handfuls of bejeweled rings from his own thick fingers.  Irimë recounted in song her tale of the mysterious rising evil to Durin, and he tasked Drerin and Dóin to see them through the Halls of Moria first to Rivendell, then to Carn Dûm in the North, so they might forewarn the followers of Elrond and the Edain of the Northern Wastes.  For days, Drerin, Dóin, Gràine and Irimë traveled the subterranean mansion halls of the Khazâd, bearing witness to the remarkable day-to-day dealings of the Dwerrows:  great forges in which Dwarven smiths stood among the flames hammering weapons and armor directly upon red-hot coals the size of small boulders; black chasms teeming with miners clinging to walls and dangling from ropes as they searched for jewels and veins of precious metals; hearths and meals to feed throngs of giants many times over; and most remarkably, rare Dwarven women, plump and rose-faced, with beards as long as their curling tresses.  Before long, Drerin and Dóin escorted Gràinne and Irimë to a hidden egress near Rivendell where they promised to meet them three days hence. 

 

Gràinne and Irimë crossed a tributary of the Bruinen upon a high-hanging bridge and were met by horsemen bards who escorted them to Elrond’s Homely House of Imladris.  Elrond himself met them at his hidden refuge and welcomed them with warming miruvor, as Irimë again spoke of the rising evil she had encountered throughout the Enedwaith, the Orc warbands moving through the misty peaks of the Hithaeglir, and their mission to warn the Edain of Carn Dûm.  Elrond cautioned them that the Edain were easily swayed, and that they may find that the Men of Carn Dûm are already under the thrall of this evil.  Resolving to learn more about the entity Gorthaur that seemed to have some role in recent events, Irimë requested access to Elrond’s library, where she and Gràinne found many references to the “terrible dread” spirit that had its origins in the ancient Years of the Trees, but seemed abruptly to have left the Circles of the World by the beginning of the Second Age…until recently.  The texts proved too engrossing to heed the several requests of Elrond’s steward to retire for the evening.  For Gràinne, the accounts of Gorthaur led to an ancient scroll she could not copy with ink, for the foreign script seemed to alter and rearrange so as to elude reproduction.  So absorbing were the writs that Irimë noticed Gràinne all consumed by their contents, and when she bade her rest, the Dúnedain glared at her with red eyes and snarled back in a Black Speech!