Fortunately, the others found me before my life blood completely drained away (not that I'm complaining, but the murderer evidently wasn't smart enough to cut my throat or anything like that), and I was saved by poor Maerlyan.

I say poor Maerlyan because we'd only gone several hundred feet down the road before more bad things showed up. The murderer jumped out from behind the bushes, revealing himself to be Jean Tarascon (this was, of course, only a minute surprise). He taunted us briefly, then turned and stabbed poor defenseless Luc. Well, we weren't going to take this lying down, and I had a score to settle with the bastard, so we fought back. Between Prihelm and Leighla and I (yes, Prihelm's luck turned around, at just the best time), we had him on the ropes (he'd actually had to guzzle some sort of potion in order to heal himself) when four more ghouls, in a remarkable display of bad timing, showed up. I turned to hold them off from Haley, who wasn't doing much in this battle, and the rest continued to mistreat Jean (jerk!). Fortunately, I was able to kill one of the ghouls and hold off another, but one made it through to attack Liss, and the other paralyzed Maerlyan.

Leighla, meanwhile, had just shot Jean through the eye (while I wanted him to pay, I also wanted him to face justice, but I guess that won't happen now), and the rest of the party turned to help me with the ghouls. Eventually, we were able to deal with them (my swordsmanship is coming along quite nicely; I got another one, and even Prihelm got into the act and killed one!), but not before they'd done serious harm to poor Maerlyan. We did our best, but we weren't quite able to pull him through. Hopefully we'll be able to get him raised from the dead; while Brucian is reluctant to do that at the moment, perhaps we'll be able to convince him later. Leighla said a blessing over his body, while I went to make sure that Jean wouldn't rise to kill me ever again. Incidentally, during the course of this, I found a potion and noticed that Jean's dagger was of excellent quality; the rest of the party doesn't seem to want either, which surprises me somewhat, but I'm not going to quibble too much; they'll thank me for saving these two things yet!

We were gathered in the inn, celebrating our victory (except for Dogboy, who would only go into the stable) when Luc unscrambled his words for us!

The night of evil shall descend on the land
When this sign of hexads is near at hand.

In the house of Daegon, the sorceror born,
Though life, unlife, unliving shall scorn.

The lifeless child of stern mother found,
Heralds a time, night of evil unbound.

Seventh time the son of suns doth rise,
To send the knave to an eternity of cries.

Inajira will make his fortunes reverse,
Dooming all to live with the dreaded curse.

The light of the sky shining over the dead,
Shall gutter and fail turning all to red.

I still don't know what this all means, I'm afraid, but he added something new: "Look for the scroll where the old rest fine, behind the stone where six start shine. The finding, however, will cause much pain, beware the time of the falling rain."

At first, I didn't understand this any better than the other. It became a little more clear when Brucian explained that Jean had brought Marcel, who had been killed by some sort of undead, over to see him. Brucian had tried to raise Marcel, but it didn't work; Jean looked shaken when the spell was cast, and left muttering something about a scroll. Putting two and two together, we opened the scroll tube, and found the scroll to have written what Luc said above. Haley read it and one of the locals keeled over and turned into a zombie! The zombie seemed to be attracted to whoever had the scroll, but I was able to dispatch it with a single precise thrust (I'm so proud of my improvement in battle!).

That, we thought, was that. We were very horribly wrong, but since I don't really have the time to write about it any further... If I survive, I'll explain.