- Sabriel, who can sense the presence of the dead, finds a dead soldier on her way to Cloven Crest; she gives him a proper necromantic send-off, but finding a corpse adds to her uneasiness.
- Soon after that, she finds the beheaded corpses of the rest of the soldier's patrol. Beheading is a clue that another necromancer has been at work, since beheaded corpses can be revived as Hands, mindless servants who will do the bidding of their necromancer (read: zombies).
- Sabriel uses Charter Magic to discover a message from one of the dead soldiers embedded in a bridge post, a warning that one of the Greater Dead had attacked them. (Not to be confused with the Grateful Dead.)
- Sabriel is sure that this Greater Dead creature must be connected to her father's disappearance.