Born of the Highlands, along shores washed by northern seas, Guinevere has accepted the power offered to her by the Dragon Throne and been crowned Queen. Her first duty must be to her homeland and her people, to protect them from the reviled Saxon raiders. Instinct tells her she must strike first or surrender control of the seas, but her chieftains and warlords refuse to accept that their new queen, barely a woman, can know anything of the art of war and offer her an army of misfits and outcasts. Young and untried, Guinevere knows she cannot - must not - fail. Sailing to confront the hated enemy with only this motley band of ill-equipped fighters at her side, she summons the spirits of the dead. But there is a terrible price to pay for their help - a knowledge that will change her utterly. As Guinevere faces the first great test of her reign, so her childhood companion, Black Leg - the shape-shifting son of her adoptive father - begins his own quest to become a man and warrior worthy of this new queen. In his wanderings, he will endure trials both mental and physical, discover inner strengths and, with the Lady of the Lake, primal passions, each experience more perilous, more terri