Act I, Part X: The Escape from Angband
5 long years Tinnurion worked in the mines of Morgoth, aiding him unwillingly in his preparations for a war to come. Many terrible things he saw in that land and great was his anguish, but by strength of will and cunning and his keen eyes he found a way out of the mines. Keeping the dreaded look of the Thangorodrim to his left, he found a hard road out of the black mountains that harboured Angband. He was tired and a throbbing pain overwhelmed him, but so afraid was he that the orcs might have caught wind of his escape and had sent wolves or worse in his pursuit, that he did not rest until he saw the green plains of Ard-galen stretch out before him. There his feet could not carry him any further and he fell into a dark and restless sleep at the foot of the mountain.
When he woke, it was night and he lay there still. The sky above was still filled with black plumes of the fire mountains to the north, but far to the south he could discern the glint of stars and his Elven eyes saw that no more than 50 miles of green grass lay between him and the cover of trees. He kept low but moved swiftly, until at last he reached Taur-nu-Fuin. Coming into that land exhausted and famished he bore a new love for pines and the bedding of needles that they provided, and for thickets and thistles and other prickly plants that grew there in great number. From their fruit and roots he nourished himself, and using their branches he kept dry when it rained. But hunger remained his greatest enemy, and the dread and weariness of his time in Angband did not cease.
In his lonely wanderings through those forests, he was eventually espied by scouts of Angrod and Aegnor, sons of Finarfin who had settled in those forests they called Dorthonion. Thus it came to pass that Tinnurion, seeming to their eyes a creeping spy or thrall of Morgoth, was nearly killed by their arrows. But a moment of doubt in their eyes had saved him and instead they took him prisoner and brought him to their realm. Chained he was brought before the brothers Aegnor and Angrod who wished to know his name and his intent, but Tinnurion answered:
'I am Daerandir, a lonely traveller of the wild.'
The brothers could only guess at why he took that name, though they suspected that he was one of those many Elves who had escaped the Iron Prison and wandered the wild without purpose. For it was not the first time they had met a stray elf of that kind and they had always treated them with suspicion and rejected them, for they feared that they served willingly or otherwise as spies of Morgoth.
Thus with that same suspicion they questioned him further and Tinnurion would have been insulted by their treatment if it were not for the shadow that lay over him. Thus he told them the truth and his sorrows were laid bare for all to see and Aegnor and Angrod, being more generous and noble of spirit than the sons of Fëanor, pitied him. Then Tinnurion, hoping to receive mercy, warned them of the horrifying things he had seen in Angband, and he told them that Morgoth was preparing a great and terrible force large enough to break the Long Peace. But the Noldor there assembled did not heed his words, hearing in it the deceitful ways of their hated enemy. But they could not slay him, for they feared it might bring more evil upon them than letting him stay. Thus they set him free and offered him food for the road. But Tinnurion's hatred for the Noldor returned to him twofold and he refused bitterly, saying to them instead:
'Treat me like a prisoner and a spy if you cannot help it, but stay your pity. That befits me only, for those who take the grieving words of a sorrower for deceit deceive only themselves.'
And with those words he turned away southward into the forest, and scouts of the Noldor espied him for days till he reached the slopes of the Ered Gorgoroth. There they lost all sight of him.
