This first volume relates the fortunes of Clennen and his family, itinerant musicians who travel the lanes of Dalemark. With warring earldoms and spies everywhere, few people move between North and South, so the musicians often carry news--and sometimes, as now, a passenger. When violence overtakes them, the family's fate and the mysterious Kialan's are bound together in terror and flight--and in music, for the songs of Dalemark mean more than they say.