Elrond appeared in his library and, with but his breath, cleared Gràinne's fog.  He escorted them out of his library and offered to tend to their needs until their departure on the morrow – two days earlier than they expected to leave to rendezvous with the Dwarves.  At dawn, Gràinne and Irimë left Imladris and set up camp on the edge of the upland woods between the Rivers Hoarwell and Loudwater.  As Gràinne hunted for game in the forest, she was set upon by Wood Elves, identifying themselves as the people of Malgalad, son of the far-off King Thranduil, whose kingdom lay by the Ered Luin.  As Malagalad’s bowmen strove to drive her away with their shafts, Gràinne cut the bow of one of them and routed the wardens. 

 

That night, Irimë suffered an unquiet slumber in which she dreamt of stepping into the spirit world where a malevolent, ancient intelligence "invited" her to the North.  She awakened in the darkness beneath the stars to find the Wood Elves, returned in greater numbers, watching from a distance across the northern tributary of the river Bruinen.  Irimë noticed beds of Sangwatasar, a poisoned willow, growing around her and Gràinne.  She awakened her protégé, who cleared the noxious weed with Mahtarocco, her horse cleaver, and dumped it in the river.  The hidden bowmen warned her back with a volley of arrows, and Irimë stepped forward to address her distant kinsmen.

 

During their parlay, the Wood Elves addressed Irimë as “sister of Fëanor” and hinted that Prince Malgalad was protecting a “prize” and that he “sees all,” leading Irimë to believe that the prince had somehow acquired one of Fëanor’s palantír.  Weary of the Wood Elves’ bravado, Gràinne forded the river and attacked them, rendering unconscious a third of the band and routing the rest.  Gràinne and Irimë finally returned to the Misty Mountains, where they met with Drerin Longbeard and Dóin Grimjaw, to whom Irimë recounted her encounter with the dark spirit.  Drerin and Dóin led them north, stopping to warn a tribe of Eredrim on the way of Irimë’s prophesy of a rising evil, and continued to Gundabad.  There, Gràinne and Irimë parted ways with the Dwarves, but failed to escape the notice of a band of orcs, who blew a horn to summon a pack of feral Gundabad wargs.  Gràinne and Irimë drove both groups of enemies over the icy cliffs in a two-front battle in which Irimë lost her sword and Gràinne’s warg-hide cloak was torn asunder.  With tattered clothes and weary bodies, Gràinne and Irimë crested Gundabad, where they saw across a great plain the Mannish kingdom of Carn Dûm, the first realm of the Dúnedain of the Northern Wastes.