The land of the faeries is not, as is sometimes said, one thousand days travel to the West; nor is it precisely in the other place commoners sometimes describe, about ten feet below the ground everywhere. It is a place of mists and uncertainty. It is a place that doesn't entirely exist.

In a place of mists and uncertainty, a particular House - a monastery, perhaps, or a temple, or a very strange sort of palace - has kept its own quiet company for many years. It is a place of scholarship and glum but lovely towers in blues and blacks and lavenders, a place of whisper and soft music. A place that isn't always where it was the last time you visited. A faerie place. Its master is a student of Anin, or a student of a student of a student of Anin, or Anin's shadow, or a charlatan who killed the old master, who was also a charlatan, depending on who you believe. He or she or they (perhaps they have no particular nature, or perhaps they are several beings) collect rumors and build little labyrinths of intrigue out of them, and the intelligent and cunning, who pursue those rumors to their heart, may become students themselves.

There are travelers from Nagh there, though, like the lands to the northeast, it does not pay taxes. These travelers stay a while, sometimes a fortnight, sometimes a lifetime, and they bring rumors of their own. Stories are a currency in the House. These latest stories are hard-bought and concerning: the shadow of war between Nagh and Nyh. Seekers after Anin's tomb. Secret-finders, but perhaps not secret-keepers, and this idea is most concerning to the master or mistress of the House.

Something must be done. Someone must be sent. To seek, to see, to know, to decide. Nagh is too mighty to stop, and its hero-spies doubtless too cunning and deadly to contest, but perhaps - perhaps they might be guided, convinced, not to use what they find too recklessly or destructively. To be gentle with the world, and the worlds it conceals, to leave it some room for soft music and uncertainties.

There is a young man, a student of some proficiency, with dark hair and dark eyes, who keeps a book of colors forbidden in the House and has a smile like a crescent moon. A friendly person, ready with a laugh and a wink. A liar, but a gentle one, and very fond of stories. Some say he is a traveler to the House, and some that he was born there, and some that he was made there. He doesn't remember himself, he traded those stories for more interesting ones. There is a story about how he fed his heart to a heartless companion, who serves him now with the love he had to give up. A story about a sword that shines in all the colors of the moon, hunter and harvest and pale and wounded. A story that he is a very good student.

This young man set out from the House about three spins of the sundial before other men and women of similar ambition, if perhaps different purpose, set out from Cindlemeadow. He and Eloise have met twice, to varying results, in the past, in unrelated circumstances - yet because of this he knows a little of the way through the mists, among other helpful things, and he hopes to reach the party soon and offer them. His favorite name is Valadyr, though he keeps several others, and is happy to share them and their own small stories if pressed.