Synopsis: From the front flap of the dust jacket of the Tor Books first edition: In a lab at the edge of the galaxy, in search of an ancient archive, scientists unwittingly unleashed the Blight: this vast destructive entity rampages through the Zones of Thought, subverting digital intelligence and devastating countless worlds and races throughout the Beyond. One ship, carrying children of the scientists, seeks haven on an obscure world in the Slow Zone, only to find medieval kingdoms of group-animals - the Tines - at war with one another. Another ship, itself fleeing the Blight, follows their ship's distress signal to Tines World and helps end the war, saving most of the Children. Ten years later, Ravna Bergsndot, the lone surviving human adult living among the Tines, has revived most of the hundred and fifty Children who remain in cold sleep. Under her protection, the Children have grown to adulthood and established a society with the Tines. Now Tinish packs and human beings live together in peace in the Domain, one of the few remaining outposts of humans in the galaxy, while Ravna keeps watch against the approach of the Blight. Other than Ravna, only Johanna and Jefri Olsndot, whose parents piloted the desperate flight to Tines World, have direct knowledge of the events that brought them there, and Jefri was too young to truly understand. The other Children have memories only of life before the Blight. Now, old enough to shape their own future, they question Ravna's guidance, and seek to chart a new course... heedless of the potential for disaster amid the Machiavellian politics of Tines World. As some in the Domain plot and scheme, far beyond their society's borders the legendary pack Tycoon is shaping the world's first industrial civilization. With dark alliances swirling in both human and Tinish circles, the survival of Tines World depends on Ravna. And Ravna has enemies, unseen... awaiting their moment.