The first rays of the sun were teasing his eyes, and he opened them. Luthien stood by the boulder, blending in, almost a shadow to be missed. From the way she held Finrod's seeing-glass, Beren understood that her shoulder was doing better.
He rose. He didn't need to dress, and sleeping in such territory wasn't a safe affair. Beren slept with boots on. The dagger slept at his side. The sword was in arm's reach near his improvised pillow (in reality, a roll of cloth). He didn't sleep sitting up in armour with eyes open, though... he'd seen Glorfindel do that the night before. It was a spooky but reassuring sight.
Luthien had heard him rise and came to see.
"Before we go, we definitely must have breakfast. I also wanted to..." He couldn't finish her thought. "I wanted to rehearse our act. We need to start sooner rather than later."
Beren inquired what she planned to accomplish.
"I want to imagine us approaching the main gate first. We should be walking there over the ashen plains. I don't think this dream should involve Huan, as he carries the light of the trees, and that will be very difficult to hide. It is easier to create a false glimmer in your eyes than to exinguish Huan's real light."
"All gates are watched by guards. Greetings are expected and exchanged. If we dream of walking to the gate, we should likewise dream of what we are expected to say, what we might say instead if we don't know the right words... and what might happen."
They ate breakfast.
Beren asked if Luthien needed touch to convey the dream more effectively.
"No. I must practise my abilities every day now. If we are to succeed, the reach of my voice and my mind must grow very significantly. I won't be singing loud, however."
Thus Luthien sang quietly of the shadowed plain of Anfauglith rolling back beneath them. Dark shapes of mountains appeared. Thangorodrim loomed high and burst through the smothering mat of clouds to heights unknown. Its slopes billowed smoke. Smoke mixed with clouds, covering the plain to horizon. No eagle would spy on Angband without coming below these clouds to entertain archers. Beneath mountains, a rim of dark cliffs was showing itself. A wall of vertical rock nearly half a mile tall, hundreds of miles in circumference. No structure built by elf or dwarf compared to it, while works of men were child's toys. Ancient trees of Menegroth were twigs. The walls of Ered Gorgoroth, despite inhabitants who wove unlight and counted as unlife, were possible to scale, had cracks and caves. This was smooth. But the canyon of Nargothrond remained in perspective. The highest face of Finrod's city did compare for a moment.
Their dream was proceeding at the pace of flight, and Beren saw that Luthien was truly flying at his side on bat-wings. Only, it wasn't Luthien... he looked at himself, trying to see his own appearance, perhaps to understand what kept him aloft, and hurt his eyes instead.
"Ouch!"
"Sorry, I've never seen a ball lighting, so I made you look like flash-fire instead."
"Good move, I tried looking at myself and was instantly blinded."
"In reality, we need to sneak close on ground and produce an illusion of landing," Luthien explained. "Thuringwethil would never bother to walk or ride, and Mairon could feasibly arrive like he did to Tol Sirion."
Already before their landing, a signal was blown.
"Ruinis heard their many signals over years. This should denote arrival of allies, few in number, high in standing. Lack of appended signals means the gate-master doesn't require a welcoming party or other help. Glorfindel confirmed the current gate-master is a balrog. The troll who temporarily did the job was thrown into molten rock for negligence."
"Do they intend to open that giant thing somehow, or is it stuck?"
"They have a mechanism. If the gate-master had blown an appendix to his call, a hundred worker trolls would immediately jump to action, manning great wheels inside the mountains. Not for us... not for anything short of armies or Morgoth himself. There's the wolf gate, the troll gate and the small orc-holes. I want them to fold out the stairs for us. The stairs, by the way, are your handiwork."
A hatch burst open with a clang, twenty steps above ground. Smoke billowed from the hatch and fire licked its edges. A figure appeared that could only be a balrog's horned head, and it thundered:
"What do you flying critters want of us? Has she hurt her wing and cannot fly so high, or is it merely to show off jewelry?"
"I want to check the stairs, deploy them, I want to see them work! And if we flew above, surely you would say I smuggle dwarves and vermin! Be glad that I'm not ordering the entire mechanism to be tested, and greetings, rogs of fire!" (He didn't know the balrog's name and assumed that others lurked behind the wall.)
"Hoho, you think we'd yield to such demands! Lucky are you to have the stairs pushed down. We also have a bunch of rope ladders!"
"Don't you weasel there but start pushing then! As for the ladders, you can tie the whole bunch around your horns and imitate Ulmo in flames!"
With great grinding and noise, one flight of stairs after another started unfolding and locking in their place, held from above by cables of steel unrolling. With a thud, the stairway hit the ground. Dust swirled and in the cloud of dust, Beren managed to take a look at himself. First of all, he had no real weapon, but there was a hammer resembling the dwarvish axe on his belt. He wore a coat that looked surprising in its dull practicality. No adornments, but at least twenty pockets, all filled with something or other. The backpack he felt on his back was also chock full of stuff.
"That's a good enough ceremonial dress for a high smith," commented Luthien. She also wore no armor, and in fact her clothes were such as to emphasize... beautiful form. "Myself, I intend to strike orcs blind and make Balrogs burn a degree hotter with loathing. They forsook their fair form forever."
They climbed the stairs and reached a platform wherefrom other stairs went down. The balrog was the gate-master, castellan of the main gate. It was keeping respectful distance as if knowing it could hurt her.
"In return for pushing the stairs, humor us Mairon, what makes you dress thus strangely? Where is your armor? Did you break your mace? And what of her? Has Melkor invited you to a feast of elf-blood on the peaks of fire, perhaps?"
"No such thing is planned. I came to work and chose my humblest clothes. But I have a request of him that dwells deep under, and she has the same request. But the request is of rather private nature and I'd not comment further upon it here."
"Now surely you don't..."
"Oh yes we do indeed."
"Go forth and try then, but don't you disappear from forges!"
"I don't intend to."
The dream broke and Angband disappeared.
"You improvise well," she commented.
"I monopolized the speaking," Beren said.
"I was the Balrog, mind you. You were supposed to speak first. Mairon outranks Thuringwethil and Balrogs respect him. He will speak to them while she holds back."
Sun was rising higher and they took to the dwarf-road. No living creature except birds and insects showed itself for the entire day. By dusk, they reached a place that Glorfindel had told to check.
"Are you totally sure this is the right mountain?"
"There was only one road. This is it."
"Then the accessway must be here somewhere."
"At the highest limit of the shadow of the southward peak, allowing for variations in season."
The shadow of the neigbouring mountain-peak was fading out and moving right each minute.
"They invent everything and then can't make a single road sign!"
"That is perfectly natural of dwarves," she smiled calmly. "Don't worry. We will inspect the place thoroughly in morning."
"I would rather guess it's a hoax. After all, Glorfindel did not take the road through mountains. He climbed over them, while Ruinis hasn't even heard of this way."
"I trust him not to tell us stories without substance behind them."
"But he did caution us to avoid wasting time looking."
"That is only prudent."
At that, a solid thud and crash came from their right. In the rock wall, a door had opened and two dwarves in thick helmets were stepping out. One immediately saw them, pointed at Huan and shouted a warning in Khuzdul. Luthien instantly shouted something back, and Beren could make no sense of it, except for the definite shortage of wovels.
The dwarf stood like frozen. Then he shouted into the door in Sindarin: "Revoke that!"
A third dwarf came with a surprised expression and was going to open his mouth, when his colleague motioned towards Luthien and Beren.
The third dwarf ran back into the door and much cursing ensued, then he came out and said calmly, also in Sindarin. "Revoked."
"Greetings, strangers. Your accent is terrifying, elf-maid, but you managed to speak the language of our kin. How is this?"
"I speak but a little of what your distant relatives in Menegroth tried to teach me."
"Oh, Menegroth! I know the stories of these elf-friends! I thought you were from Nargothrond."
"We come from Nargothrond, but my birthplace is Menegroth."
"I'm from Dorthionion," Beren added.
"We don't get visitors often," said the dwarf. "Before I even ask for your names, what is your business?"
"A friend told us that you have... a way."
"Our ways are our own, and we have many of them."
"He mentioned a very special way."
"I wonder who that friend could have been. Was he too perhaps from Menegroth?"
"No. In fact, he's from across the sea."
"An elf of far shores knows of our way, hear that Darvi! Way to keep our secrets!"
"I admit the shortcoming, but won't admit a fault. It is fully beyond my control. You know the merchants living downstream in the city. They flap their tongue like birds flap wings, so news flies fast and far. What do you know of our way, and what do you want of it?"
"We know it takes people far, and we seek your permission to use it."
"And you are?"
"Luthien am I and he is Beren. We are friends of Finrod. I wish I could bring greetings from Faldin, but we only saw him from distance this time. I'm the daughter of Elu from Doriath, Beren is the son of Barahir from Dorthonion, let the memory of his father and his land rest in peace."
"We need to talk of this in private, will you wait outside?"
"Thank you for your patience, of course we do."
Darvi and the other dwarf went back indoors while the third remained stiff like stone. Only his eyelids could be seen blinking in the helmet's shadow. Minutes passed before the dwarves came back.
"We do indeed have a way. Are you sure you know where it takes you?"
"I have heard the last exit is to the Fen of Serech, almost on the plains of Ard-Galen, the ashen plains with dead forests left by the surge of fire."
"And you want to go there?"
"Yes."
"Can I ask for what?"
"To travel north."
"You know what lies in the north?"
"We know. Still we must travel north, survive and bring back something. Trust that we won't be asking you for a return trip."
"You hear this, Glomin? Are my ears okay?"
"I hear the same, Darvi. They are mad. I've never seen mad people so well informed of their madness, though."