After a dinner of haggis (presumably the Highlanders' answer to some of the Inquisition's more refined torture methods), the Castillans were left more or less to their own devices in the half-ruined keep. The room where the Changeling stayed was guarded by tow MacEachern, as were some other doors, but no one seemed to ride herd on the heroes. During the night, Ferdinand and Lucas made separate reconnaissance trips.
Meanwhile, Melisandre revealed that she had salvaged the Mumblety Peg's head during the sinking of the Maris Stella, and had been carrying it in her backpack ever since. She and Constanza discreetly set to asking the Construct questions about the collar that Ferdinand-the-Domae was wearing. The collar, they learned, was "of Syrne, Thalusi, and Sidhe origin." The Mumblety Peg head said it could free the Domae and "return Ferdinand to full function" but only after being repaired. Asked where to find the necessary components, it started scanning and processing information, an operation which would last all night before it revealed that components could be found in two locations, for which it gave coordinates. The first was within the castle itself, and after a bit of searching, the materials turned out to include the twelve MacEachern swords worn by the guards.
While the girls were talking with Mumblety Peg, Lucas ran into an old acquaintance while he was sneaking about: Juan, who had disappeared at the foot of the Vesten tower, the Spear of the West Wind! He brought Juan back to talk with the rest of the group. Juan would not give much detail on his whereabouts, but said he had been tracking his erstwhile companions for quite some time, but had recently lost their trace so had decided to attend to some other business he had with the MacEacherns. He knew about the Changeling and Meryth's plan, but was very surprised to hear that the MacEacherns would ally with them.
The Castillans discussed trying to ambush the MacEacherns one after the other to steal their weapons, but didn't think they could get all twelve without getting into a stand-up battle. Instead, they decided to ask an audience with Connie MacDonald outside the Changeling's presence. Constanza argued that the MacEacherns could make it moot for the Sidhe to attack the clan by sharing the secret of cold iron with other smiths everywhere in Theah, including the Niebelungen and the Soldano. But the MacEacherns were so insular that they had not heard about these other smiths, and Connie MacDonald was unconvinced. She said, however, that the Castillans were not prisoners and were free to go; if they could convince Queen Elaine to restore the clan's lands and titles, and extend protection against retribution from the Sidhe, they would consider not going through with Meryth's plan.
The heroes left and walked several days to reach the nearest port. They booked passage for Carleon, hoping to get an audience with Queen Elaine. But after sailing only a day or two, Lucas received a visit from Meryth who announced that Elaine had set sail. Before too long, they saw warship sails on the horizon, and one vessel ordered the small trader ship to heave to and prepare to be boarded. The heroes could spot Bors McAllister aboard. Lucas was brought aboard the warship and interrogated none too gently by McAllister, who wanted to know what Lucas had done with the Grail after (reportedly) stealing it. Meanwhile aboard the trader, the others noticed that the fog was rapidly and unnaturally thickening, so Constanza tried desperately to attract McAllister's attention, but in vain.
Lucas insisted on getting an audience with Queen Elaine, and McAllister angrily conceded after scrutinizing his ambassadorial papers. Lucas was returned to his ship to clean up and collect his companions. But when a longboat appeared from the fog to take them to the Queen's ship, Constanza saw that it was crewed entirely by faeries. Against their best judgement (or least Constanza's), the Castillans decided to go anyway. On board the flagship, the crew was entirely replaced by Sidhe, and McAllister had been lashed to a mast. The real crew was imprisoned belowdecks, as the heroes saw when they were taken far below into the hold. As they went down, however, it seemed to get lighter instead of darker, until the last level where, on dropping from the ladder, they found themselves on a beach by the sea. Meryth was in the water on a sort of throne.
Meryth claimed that Elaine was her prisoner, and demanded that Lucas hand over the Grail. When he didn't immediately cooperate, she said her faerie minions would take it by force -- by cutting Lucas open. A fight broke out; Constanza tackled Meryth, but the child was immensely strong. Constanza then ran back up the ladder (she was the only one still able to see it) to free the crew and Bors McAllister, while the rest of the heroes tried to prevent Lucas from being vivisected. McAllister was frantic to retrieve the Queen, but when he and Constanza tried to go back downstairs to look for Elaine and the Castillans, they found that the lower level was simply filled with water from a breach in the hull. Constanza dove through the breach to try to swim back to her friends.
Meanwhile, the other heroes were rapidly outmatched by the Sidhe, so Lucas called a truce. He figured out that despite her threats, Meryth couldn't really take the Grail by force, only scare him into giving it up somehow. The child changed tactics and said she would kill his companions if he did not surrender the Grail. Lucas demanded to see Elaine first, so Meryth produced the Queen of Avalon. When the Castillans questioned whether this was really the queen or just Glamour, Meryth allowed Constanza to plop back into the little realm. Constanza confirmed that this was not a Glamour illusion.
Meryth demanded that Lucas "judge" the Queen. She said that Elaine had once been a peasant girl, in love with a man to whom she bore a daughter. Then Derwyddon had offered her the Grail and the chance to return Glamour to Avalon; the cost was for her to abandon all other loves, and love only Avalon from thence. Elaine paled when she realised Meryth was her daughter, and even more when Meryth added that according to Derwyddon, her father had died of a broken heart. Meryth clearly wanted to cause Elaine's double ruin by forcing her to acknowledge feelings for her daughter, thereby losing the Grail and Avalon, and also allowing Meryth herself to spurn that love. The Castillans tried to explain to what was, after all, an angry little girl of phenomenal power, that Elaine's choice had been a terribly costly one in the first place.
Questioning Meryth, they also learned that the Queen of the Sea was the one who had raised her in hatred of Elaine. But Meryth was too wrapped up in her own anger to care about why she was being used as a weapon. While Melisandre tried to reason with Meryth, Lucas spoke quietly with Elaine, offering the bargain the heroes had partly negotiated with the MacEacherns: if Elaine would reinstate the clan and protect it from the Sidhe, they would not help the Changeling and Meryth. For this, however, Elaine needed the Grail. Even then she said she would not harm Meryth in any way, as she could not bring herself to.
Melisandre's impassioned plea seemed to mollify Meryth. She said she only asked that Lucas produce the Grail, agreeing that he return it to Elaine, and that Elaine embrace her. Elaine was not sure she could do so without losing Avalon. But Lucas made some attempts to, as he was instructed, reach in and bring forth the Grail. He only succeeded in jabbing himself in the stomach, and Meryth was nonplussed and upset. The Castillans explained that the Queen of the Sky had indicated that they needed the help of the Domae and the Constructs to free the Grail. The heroes then noticed that one of Meryth's Sidhe guards was missing, and Meryth became quite agitated; she said she did not know where he had gone.
Constanza remembered the two sets of coordinates that the Mumblety Peg head had indicated for useful materials; the second was now closer, as it was in Canguine. As soon as this was mentioned, a frantic Meryth instantly dropped the five Castillans right on the edge of the Canguine shore (at approximately two in the morning!) They walked in the direction indicated by the Mumblety Peg head, which was, to no one's surprise, the Syrneth lighthouse. The remnants of Constanza's crew were still camped there, and eyed the heroes with a mixture of incredulity, resignation and exasperation.
The Ferdinand-thing climbed the lighthouse with the Mumblety Peg head and, following the Construct's instructions, affixed it at the top. Ferdinand barely had time to climb down; the lighthouse started to melt and collapse as some of the materials melded into a Construct body and the rest crashed to the ground in a large pile of debris and bone-like material. Mumblety Peg walked once again.
In answer to Constanza's questions, Mumblety Peg confirmed that he could free the Domae and return Ferdinand to full functionality. Instructed to do so, he took the rest of the night to first analyze then open the collar, which dissolved into sparkling metallic flecks and melded with some of the bone-like materials leftover from the lighthouse until a being stood before the onlookers. It looked something like the creature in the Freiburg sewers, except not dessicated and crazed.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand's body slowly melted into a puddle of goo -- and Ferdinand stayed conscious for about the first hour of this process... Slowly, the Mumblety Peg reassembled the organic goo into a skeleton, then muscles, then flesh and skin -- and the process looked about equally pleasant for Ferdinand as the dissolution. When the process was over, Ferdinand's skin was smooth as a baby's, without a single scar (he'd have to get to sword calluses all over again now...)
The heroes questioned the Domae, who apparently understood them but answered only with slow nods and shakes of the head. On their request, he extracted the "Grail" from Lucas... except it did not look like the Grail at all but like a bit of chitin glowing malevolently. By playing twenty questions, the Castillans learned that the thing was not the Grail, but something meant to mimic it. The material made them think it might be of Thalusi origin.
Clearly, they had been used as a decoy. They concluded that the Changeling must be the one who had stolen the true Grail, and so they must return to the Highlands. As dawn broke, they headed back to the town of Canguine to seek Berek's Sea Dogs and ask for a ship. They found Berek himself, who agreed to take them to the Highlands so they would stop their destruction of Canguine...
Once on the sea, Lucas was visited once more by Meryth. He showed her the Grail decoy and told her their suspicion of the Changeling. Meryth immediately disappeared. The heroes reached the highlands and slogged the 80 miles to MacEachern castle. Alas, the castle was even more ruined than it had been when they left it; inside, they found the bodies of the MacEacherns but none of their weapons. Some of the Highlanders had apparently been beaten to death, while others had been killed by something that seemed to burn incredibly fine wounds into their flesh. Definitely not human.
Then Lucas walked out to greet them. They thought it was the Changeling, but Constanza told them he must be a Thalusai and not a user of Glamour, since he really did look like Lucas to her as well. Then four more people showed up, looking like Melisandre, Juan, Constanza, and Ferdinand. Juan's double greeted his original with a "Welcome, Black Cross."
