"Vaelin Al Sorna, the once-epic warrior and hero of many battles, is now the Tower Lord of the Northern Reaches. He spends his days policing the remote region against smugglers. But then he captures an assassin from the Far West. The thwarted killer tells Vaelin that the entire Far West is in peril of genocidal invasion and that the healer Sherin, now practicing her arts on the northern frontier of the lands of the Merchant Kings, will be one of the first to die. Vaelin sails for the Far West to warn her. And finds himself in the very center of a conflict that will open old wounds and rend new ones--if he survives at all"-- Provided by publisher.