Synopsis: From the back cover of the DAW Books first edition: Plague had decimated the Houses of nearly all Ardellan Clans and unless Jeryl, Mentor of Clan Alu, could rediscover the legendary lost process for creating new Houses the clans would be just a dim memory within a few generations. Yet the Guilds of the city of Berrut were not only surviving but thriving, and Jeryl was certain that within the walls of the Healer's Guild he would find the answers he sought. Yet since the arrival of the Terran Union much had changed on Ardel. Clan Alu had earned the right to become the sole trading contact with the Terrans. But now many of the Guilds were seeking to break with tradition, to bypass Clan Alu and trade directly with the beings who could offer Ardellans a wealth of metals precious to them. And these Guilds would be glad to see the Clan's power broken, would do all within their power to see Jeryl and his allies, the FreeMaster Arien and Hanra-bae, the Healer of the fisher folk, fail in their life or death mission. But even as Jeryl set out on his urgent quest, other Clans sought a different solution to their troubles, ready to call upon long-forbidden powers to drive the Terrans off Ardel for good. And Sinykin Inda, the Terran medical officer and xenobiologist gifted with some of the same mind skills of which the Ardellans were masters, was about to stumble into the midst of a Clan power struggle as he traveled to territory no Terran had ever entered before in search of a cure for the plague which had so decimated the Clans' population.