A Keeper of Dust is massive, twice or three times the height of a man, in a long, heavy robe of faded grey and sepia that drags on the ground and gathers dust as it goes. Its hood is deep and dark, and nothing shows inside it. It carries a broom of long, pale fibres, like grass bleached by years, and sweeps with slow, steady strokes. Behind it the ground is clean and the dust is gone, into its robe or its sleeves, no one knows. It moves very slowly and makes the soft, endless sound of sweeping. It smells of old dust and dried flowers.

They sweep the ruins, graveyards, and grey plains of the Whispering Trace, each over its own long road, for as long as anyone knows.

They gather and keep. A Keeper of Dust sweeps up the remnants of forgotten things, a name no one says, a ruin no one visits, the last trace of a fallen people, and archives them. It does not stop for visitors and does not speak to them, though some travellers say it will stand still to let them pass.

What it sweeps is not lost. It gathers the dust of forgotten things, and holds what remains of the fallen.

Some travellers come to the Trace to ask a Keeper of Dust for the remnant of something lost, a name, a song, a place, and some are given it. They do no harm.

Some peoples on Caeldon sweep a grave on the day of remembrance and say they sweep for the great sweeper; the custom may remember a traveller’s tale of the Keepers of Dust. Sayings about the sweeper who keeps every grain are common where the dead are honoured.