Aclaimed author Elizabeth Moon spins gripping, richly imagined epic fantasy novels which have received comparisons to the work of such authors as Robin Hobb and Lois McMaster Bujold. In this volume, Moon’s excellent masterwork gets to its triumphant bottom line. The secret reappearance of magery through the entire land continues to be fulfilled with suspicion, fear, and violence. In the kingdom of Lyonya, Kieri, the half-elven, half-human ruler, struggles to balance the competing needs of his traditions while fighting a dangerous risk to his guideline: evil elves linked in some way to the rebirth of magic. Meanwhile, in the neighboring kingdom of Tsaia, a couple of ancient artifacts recovered by the previous mercenary Dorrin Verrakai may contain the answer to the riddle of magery’s return. Hence Dorrin embarks on the dangerous quest to come back these relics of the bygone age to their all-but-mythical place of origin. What she encounters there changes her in unimaginable ways-and spell doom or salvation for the entire world.