Synopsis: From the back cover of the DAW Books first edition: The pathway to war - Palaton was a tezar, one of the rare Choyan pilots able to navigate the Patterns of Chaos, sending starships through null space at faster than light speeds. The other races of the Compact sought to learn the secret of tezars, but despite intrigue and covert attacks on Palaton's own race, the planet Cho maintained its monopoly on FTL flight. Yet tezars paid a high price for their talent. Eventually each pilot suffered neural burnout which, in time, invariably proved fatal. But then forbidden research gave tezars hope in the form of a newly discovered race that had not yet earned Compact membership, a race known as humans. When Palaton linked with the young human male named Ran, it was the beginning of a symbiosis that would see both transformed into a new gestalt identity, no longer quite a part of either race. Yet even as they struggled to master their bonding and the powers it gave them, Palaton was caught up in a deadly political game on his home world, a situation that could see Cho torn apart by civil war. And only if Palaton discovered the truth about his own heritage and the long-vanished House of Fire, did he and Ran stand any chance of surviving the chaos to come.