Episode 19 Synopsis

In two memories from the Quiet Lands, Vyr learns more about the power and danger within her. Zress teaches her to harvest giant-spider blood and survive Rubrum Vinec, an Umtheran wine that would kill most drinkers. Later, just before Vyr enters Tyve, her uncle Ildren reveals that Syl'Vyr was politically assassinated rather than exiled because her ethomantic gift threatened Ryphus. The last known Umtheran with that power, Demantrius, was banished to Tyve inside a metal ship. Ildren tells Vyr to seek his guidance if he remains sane, but to kill him if his hunger for life has made him feral.

Beyond the door at Ephthalas, the company enters the Evenfall, a starless realm of tangible darkness, jagged cliffs, and a distant golden tree beneath something immense moving across the sky. Four stone Vey wait around a pedestal made for the Dark Scepter. Torin places the artifact there and surrenders the four dormant levels of power hidden in his memory to strengthen the statues. Each statue will resist the scepter until it is destroyed, after which Torin's constitution will drain until he either retrieves the artifact or dies. Torin senses that the four Vey were a painter, a warrior, a sculptor, and a poet, promises to return, and leaves a makeshift doll beside them. On the way out, three keys and a dagger are dipped in the golden sap and transformed into gold.

The road to Piln leads the company through the garn fields outside Malben. After killing the squeaver Torin names Bjuurl, the travelers fight a trapped Braxton whose naturally poisonous flesh is purified for food. They rescue Zharls Huckley from service as a human scarecrow and learn that he delivered Yore and Gander barrels for a stranger dressed entirely in black. In Malben, Gyle Molberry's two mills are overrun by black webbing and glints from broken barrels, while his workers Puck and Bucky have fallen ill. One contaminated shipment has already gone to Piln, so the party evacuates nearby buildings, burns both mills, and arranges warnings and a request for replacement food. As the company splits between the Plague Court and the search for the black-clad stranger, Torin sees a figure with Veyan features and the same yellow eyes as his own.