It's fifteen years after the Norsunder War. David, one of Detlev's boys, is no longer a boy. He's a man in his early thirties, having served since the war as a teacher and guide at the tiny dyranarya school, revived after a four thousand year hiatus?without having achieved a dyr himself. Much as he loves his work, he is aware that this is not his life path.

So, what is? At loose ends presently, his last student having gone off to a new life, he agrees to check out some rumors in the long troubled, bandit-infested valley of the southern branch of the Fal river. He's always rather liked the rowdy, swashbuckling Kergans with their elaborate dueling rules; there is no central government, the various guilds having sufficed to keep trade flowing between the cities and the rest of the world.

But now, it seems, the enigmatic king of Enaeran-Adrani is taking an interest in the area . . . and David intends to find out if it's true. Then?maybe?do something about it. He certainly knows how.

But then he meets a knife-bearing, swashbuckling smuggler, and everything changes.