Our three not-so-heroic-yet heroes set down the road to the capital city with their evil crystal, letter of introduction, three horses, and various belongings. The weather quickly turns gray and dreary, begining to rain. They meet an old man with a lantern going the opposite way on the road, and they offer him a place in their shelter for the night. He introduces himself as Father Gau, a traveling priest ministering to the small, remote villages.

The next day, as they ride along, they hear something coming up behind them. It's about 40 kobolds, presumably coming for the crystal. When they go to run away, Mehlda's horse hits a wire across the road and falls. Lawrence's horse falls tripping over hers, and Ari's horse shies, throws her, and runs into the woods. Ari runs off to catch the horse as the other two pick themselves up, and they all eventually circle back together a little further up the road and keep running.

This starts a pattern of running, walking, and generally keeping up a grueling pace. They eventually come out of the forests and come to a plain. And things begin to stir in the grass, horrible decayed remnants of a long ago battle, rising to attack them. They run again, over and through skeletal remains. Ari by surprise keeps a group of them off with the very grasses responding and grabbing the skeletons, but they're definitly being overwhelmed. So Lawrence begins to set them on fire. And now they're running from fire and skeletons, as something seems to be controlling the fire to surround them. The smoke kills Mehlda's horse, which then rises again as an undead thing. They end up having to leave the road behind, running through the fields to outrun the fire. Lawrence's horse throws him and runs, where it is dragged down by skeletons and killed. Finally, they have to stop, surrounded by fire and smoke wraiths.

Father Gau steps out of the smoke, his lantern burning with blue flame. He demands the crystal, and Lawrence pretends he is going to give it to him. When the evil necromancer steps up close, Lawrence stabs him with his sword. Mehlda shoots him while he's down, and the skeletons dissappear, the smoke clears, and the fire becomes a more normal grass fire. The find they have been herded right near an old ruined city, covered with church warnings. They head south, and hit the trading, crossroads town of Waymouth by sunset.

After an exhausted night's sleep, each attends to various errands before they head down the road again. Mehlda goes to a fletcher to buy more arrows. Ari goes to sell some of the herbs she picked up so that she can supplement their general supplies. And Lawrence goes to a tailor. The fletcher notices Mehlda's elven bow, and is very curious about how a non-elven woman ended up with it. Ari does her trading, then sees a caravan come in, complete with six young male elven archers. She hurries along to warn Mehlda. And Lawrence ends up at the tailor's behind the local baron and his son, where he learns his arch enemy is about the celebrate his remarriage to a countess of the royal line.

So while Mehlda would like to get out of town as soon as possible, Lawrence wants to see if he can turn the tables on his old enemy. He suggests that Mehlda actually try dressing like a boy elf to stay out of trouble. Ari helps her with that, and they work on Lawrence's plan. Lawrence makes arrangements to join the wait staff at the engagement party. Mehlda will sneak in over the garden wall and steal a set of the baron's son's clothes, which Ari will give to him in the gardens. Then he'll sneak into the party and find out what he can. Sneaking in and stealng the clothes goes without a hitch. Lawrence goes in to the party, where he discovers the son of his enemy is starting to get an unsavory reputation, and that the marriage is one of convenience and money. In the gardens, Ari discovers the plants are chatty once they realize someone can talk to them, and she learns the wedding is trying to be in the capital city in three months. Meanwhile, Mehlda sees five men dressed in black leave the palace and start to make the round of the inn windows in town. They finally stop at Lawrence's room with the crystal, and Mehlda fires a warning shot at them and scares them off.

They hit the road again the next day, now on foot with one horse instead of three. It's slow, tedious going. It continues its horrible, dreary rain. One night, after they've made camp and all but Lawrence have gone to sleep, someone sneaks up on the camp. Lawrence surprises him and gets shot in the shoulder by the young elven archer. This wakes up Mehlda and Ari as well. When the archer tries to escape, Ari traps him in vines and they have a little "talk." It seems he was looking into the rumor of a woman with an elven bow, which became a male elf that was not one of his men. There's a lot of tough talk before Lawrence demands he leaves, then Ari heals him of his arrow wound and Mehlda goes into a sulk.

More days of walking in the gray and the wet. They get to talking about their pasts and such, and Ari mentions her merchant cart ride from Greymill to Longmarch. With that in mind, they all hitch a ride on a farmer's potato cart. He takes them the rest of the way to the city. With letter in hand, they get up to the temple complex as fast as they are able to get rid of the crystal. They are taken to the library, where they are then led into a back room and the priest destroys the crystal and everything that touched it. They tell their story, and learn more about the horrible "Gau" and disturbing troubles in the north. Lawrence volunteers to take up a holy crusade to find out what's actually going on in the north, and gets them all rooms at the temple until they leave.