Except for five godlet-drops that run in his blood, Harsu is human.

His mother is Daama, the forty-first daughter of the fifty-ninth daughter of one of the Wind God's nine thousand or so children. His father was human too, a warrior–physician. But now he's gone and Harsu has inherited only a cloak edged with copper coins, a clay tablet, and an old war-steed.

This is all he has to survive what lies beyond the Gate of Time and Place.