Somewhere north of Dun Mynn, on the road to Dun Vwym and the Bard school, Pynwydden Abbey to look for answers, Faen began to call himself Llewer. He told them that the road to Dun Vwym was too long for such a late start that day. He told them he’d passed a charcoaler’s shack about halfway. They decided to try and get lodging there if they could.

On arriving at the hut and its attendant char building and small barn (with 1 goat able to but not escaping the yard, thank-you-very-much), they found the place cool and quiet and abandoned. Using the Eye, Caerdwyn perceived a stain upon the earth behind the shack, as though green liquor had been poured there. Nothing seemed to be there.

Making their camp and a meal in the shack, they discovered under the coat hooks by the door, three carved wooden figurines: a man, a horse and a spider, in similar size and increasing complexity and skill. Over dinner, they talked about what might have become of the Salkai, and concluded that given what they knew, the only real conclusions to draw were that either the Salkai were in the midst of some terrible and intense war, or they, the organic masters of the sea, were afraid of something in or around the island of Mawr.

After a comforting dinner, they made early bed in the warm cabin.

In the deepest dark of the night, with Dorllan flying fast across the sky, they all wakened from Llewer’s yell. He patted at his body as though many things were prickling his skin. There was nothing in evidence. Bayeo heard the distant sound of a horse in distress. A horse at speed in distress, probably carrying a burden.

They suited up quickly and made their way outside, creeping around the house in the blue dark. The horse was closer, and closer still, a shadow in the dark. At a certain distance from the house, a large rider materialized on his back, a shadow limned in glints of cold light. He held a bow and was turned backward, frantically releasing shafts into the night of Teinwood.

Out of the dark, shapeless forms fell on the rider, unseating him. his cloak clasp, a spark of sunlight leaping from him. He vanished. The black things came upon the horse, and it fell, in the center of what Caerdwyn had sensed as a stain of absinthe.

Alone, in the sudden cold, they rested a moment. Then, among the grass, they found no scent, no trace of the passage. They did find, at the end of the spark-fall, a golden broach. Removing it from the earth, they found it was godsblood, and emblazoned with the sign of Caer Cuval, worn only by its noble sons or perhaps close retainers. Also in the earth they found a helmet of brass and leather – well-made and lightly worn with the passing of time and the elements, perhaps a season or three there in the grass. They found nothing else, no trace of what had erased from that place all trace of fallen man and rider save these two artifacts.

After some searching, they followed the goats bleated advice and retreated to the cottage, free – for the moment – from ghosts.