First Time in Paperback

Summary

National bestselling and award-winning author Sharon Shinn has been hailed as "the most promising and original writer of fantasy to come along since Robin McKinley" by Peter S. Beagle, and her work praised as "taut, inventive, often mesmerizaing" (Kirkus Reviews). Now she weaves a new world wrought with magic and mayhem, in which the fate of a troubled land may rest in the hands of those few who would remain loyal to their kin—and each other...

Clouds of unrest are darkening the land of Gillengaria. In the southern region, ill feeling toward magic and those who use it has risen to a dangerous level, though King Baryn has ordered that such men and women are to be tolerated.

Whispers abound that he issued the decree because his new young wife is herself a mystic, who has used her powers to ensnare him. The king knows this—and he knows that he now sits uneasy on the throne. There are those barons of the Twelve Houses, who, out of their own ambition, might well use this growing dissent to overthrow him.

So he dispatches the mystic woman Senneth on a journey to see firsthand how dire the situation might be. Accompanying her are Justin, a young Rider who distrusts the magical arts; Kirra, a healer and shape-changer born of the Twelve Houses; her servant, the lowborn Donnal, also a shape-shifter; and Tayse, the first among the King's Riders. He, too, holds a hard view of mystics in general—and Senneth in particular.

As these unlikely allies venture further into the south, they enter a land under the sway of a fanatical cult that would purge Gillengaria of all magic users. They will face death—and worse. And they will come to realize that their only hope of survival lies in standing together, mystic and Rider, side by side.