The wizard is dead and there is peace in the Valley, but peace doesn't necessarily mean that life gets easier. As summer drags on, Taryn MacTavish must find a way to cope with the inevitable changes peace has brought: Her baby griffin is growing up, the Dragon-born Pathfinders have opened the Roads between Arcadia and Earth, the long-exiled Cerosan are returning to their homeland, and Antilles, lord of the Valley of Hoof and Horn, has defied all tradition and asked Taryn to marry him, but perhaps the greatest change is the one growing under her own heart?the child conceived by the wizard's mark.

But while Taryn's new family on Arcadia and her old family from Earth come together in celebration, a new shadow grows, an ancient evil which sends Taryn alone into strange new lands on an impossible quest from which there may well be no return.