Synopsis: When Sime killed Gen it was the normal way of things. Gens were not people, after all. They existed only to produce the life-giving selyn which, taken at the moment of death's fear, gives Simes renewed existence. The Sime Risa Tigue, shipwrecked, injured and needing selyn, stumbles on the trail of the Gen called Sergi ambrov Keon. Sergi was a Companion, a Gen who could control the transfer of selyn so both Gen and Sime survived. And in Risa, Sergi saw a Sime with the potential to become the rarest of beings, a Channel, a true giver of life. But Risa was a born killer not a life giver. Could she survive the transformation from one to the other? And even if she did, could she, Sergi and the Simes and Gens of Keon survive the deadly enmity of a land of killer Simes? (from the back cover of the first edition)