Raised in a family where his cousins and he are directed to read a secret library of books written in a strange language, Dan North discovers that he is a member of an exiled clan of mages and that his birth has reignited a war.

The much-anticipated third installment in Card's New York Times bestselling Mithermages series. Danny North is the first Gate Mage to be born on Earth in nearly two thousand years, or at least the first to survive and claim his power, for families of Westil in exile on Earth have a treaty that requires the death of any suspected Gate Mage. The wars between the families had been terrible, until at last they realized it was their own survival in question....