In mid-February, 1221, Gergo, Kykna, and Tereysa led Conrad the Redcap and three of the grogs—the Almogavar Alvaro, Cleis the Huntress, and a newly-recruited Danish mercenary named Thorvald—to Burroo Ned, where the former Diedne covenant of Caarjyn Arawn ("Friends of Arawn") was located. They had pieced this together from clues found in Redcap records of Stonehenge, and the journey was about four hours southwest over wooded hills.
As they began to climb the hill, however, they were greeted by a supernaturally large black spider, a creature which was also bearing many small tools in a harness around its body. They followed it when it ran off, and it spoke to them before disappearing into a sinkhole in the ground, speaking a strange riddle. Then they spotted a young man with haunting eyes, and they followed him to a stone cabin, before he too spoke a riddle and disappeared. In this way, the magi and their companions discovered the Veil—a magical protection by which the Friends of Arawn defended themselves from intruders.
There were twelve of the guardians, which the magi swiftly determined were a complex illusion that kept them trapped within the Veil unless they either departed the hill or solved the mystery. The guardians appeared in a random order, and the company spent the remainder of the day gathering clues before they eventually made camp on the slop of the hill.
The next day they decided to send Conrad back to the covenant to get advice from Bradan, whom they knew to very knowledgeable in magical matters, and from Thomlyn, who knew the Isle better than any of the magi. And so Conrad used his magical boots to return to the Round Meadow, where he learned that Thomlyn's daughter Corcair had a series of strange dreams in which she was guided out of a forest by first a fox, then a spider, and finally a snake. Bradan accompanied Conrad on foot back to Burroo Ned, while Thomlyn continued to work on setting up his alchemy lab in one of the tents.
It was Kykna who made the first breakthrough when she noticed that the riddles connected to each other with shared words; the last word spoken by the fox was the first word spoken by the spider. In this way the magi were able to piece together the correct sequence of guardians to follow. And Gergo solved the riddle, giving the answer "a crown" to the final guardian to appear, which was a monkey.
They ascended to the top of Burroo Ned as the sun was setting. There, they saw two tall rocky outcroppings atop the hill, hollowed out with caves. A short stone block rose up from the earth in front of a curved staircase which descended into a thirty-foot-wide pit. A glance down the pit revealed chambers, balconies, and a bridge descending perhaps 150 feet before the pit was filled with water. But how much deeper it went, no one could say.
Until Tereysa used simple spontaneous magic to try to detect an aura. She botched the spell badly and was overwhelmed with magic, briefly entering Twilight. There, she saw the covenant as it was during the attack by the Order over two centuries before: Flambeau and Tremere magi in the lead, with an army of grogs, fighting their way down the stairs while archers and other defenders fought them back in a bloody retreat. But the bottom of the pit was not flooded, and there she saw a colossal wicker man—so far unlit with fire—into which had been bound many living people who cried out in terror. When her vision ended, and she returned to the world, a shock of her hair turned pure white.
Alarmed by this unsettling vision, the magi read the stone marker, which instructed all who came here to leave the ruins alone, on the instruction of one Uderzus of Guernicus. The magi decided to withdraw back into their camp in the Veil and await the morning.
After following the guardians and again answering the riddle, the entire company brought their camp to the top of the hill and continued their investigation. One of the caves atop the hill was discovered to be a former barracks, wrecked and abandoned. The other cave was barricaded with stones and large beams, and when Gergo cast Prying Eyes to see through this barricade, his second sight allowed him to see a ghostly figure spying upon them in return from the room beyond. This ghost was a young man wearing the distinctive red cap of House Mercere, but when Gergo spoke to him, the redcap recoiled in panic and vanished.
The grogs moved aside the barricade, revealing an abandoned stable. In his search, Gergo detected a slight give to the earthen floor in the back of the cave, where digging revealed a trap door, unopened for centuries.
Alvaro took the lead, descending the shaft using stone rungs. Thirty feet down he found a tunnel leading away from the shaft, but he descended further until, a hundred feet down, the shaft was flooded.
The magi decided to explore the side tunnel. Alvaro, Gergo, Thorvald and Tereysa went down this tunnel, which ended in a sealed hatchway. With great effort they were able to force it open, whereupon they realized they were at the base of Burroo Ned, on the other side of the Veil. They had discovered the secret entrance and emergency exit from the covenant.
After they returned to the hilltop, Kykna flew down to the chamber that lay across the decayed bridge. Passing through the massive doors, which were ajar, she discovered a large entry chamber decorated with a fountain depicting a nymph pouring water from a vase. But the fountain was dry. Iron doors led away, as did two short passages, each leading to circular staircases going down. One of these passages was partially blocked by a semicircular boulder that had clearly fallen from the ceiling above, crushing some kind of small creature that had since decayed to a skeleton. Markings in the ceiling and floor near this boulder depicted the antlers-and-crown symbol of the Friends of Arawn.
As the other magi arrived, lowered down on a rope from the floor above (for no one was willing to try the bridge), they spotted a second observer watching them. This individual was armed with a massive hammer and wearing a steel helm and leather armor, and like the other Gergo was able to confirm this individual—who identified himself as Paulo when approached—was also a ghost.
The magi spoke with Paolo, who admitted he was a grog assigned to watch this chamber. When he learned they, too, were magi, Paolo was happy to answer their questions, revealing one of the staircases here led to the wizard chambers, while the other led the common rooms. But Paulo's mental capacity was clearly deficient, though the magi could not tell if this was his natural condition, bad Latin, or his nature as a ghost. Eventually, Gergo casually mentioned Paolo was dead and the man flew into a rage, smashing the stone walls with his hammer and then vanishing.
Here, the magi paused. They had already learned much: this was in fact a Diedne covenant. And though it was well-defended and had a strong magic aura, the Quaesitors would certainly be skeptical of any magi who tried to build a covenant here. Finding a covenant site was their first priority.
And so the magi decided to end their investigation of the Friends of Arawn, at least for now. They would return to the Round Meadow, rest and gather resources, and go next to Cashtal Lajer, the Castle of Strength, where a Tremere magus had led a group of Irish magi in the founding of a different covenant, soon after the end of the Schism War.