The wheel of time keeps turning. It stops for no one. It cannot be escaped.

As the flames of the funeral pyre consume Clan Iredale's dead, Dagna, the chieftain's second daughter, chants a single name over and over, so the Gods will remember. It is a name of her own choosing: Zachary.

The clan must honor its dead, but Edmund, the chieftain of Clan Iredale, must focus his thoughts on the days ahead.

The Iredales must return to their ships. They have business with Seldon, the chieftain of Clan Sauvie, business that cannot wait. They must make haste.

No matter the cost, the Iredales' grief will have its due.

In Seldon's Hall, The Assassins of Harmony, Book 5, spins a dystopian tale, set several centuries in the future, in which ambition and defiance explode like barrels of hot pitch thrown into the cauterizing flames of a funeral pyre.