Baron Valdemar and his people have found a temporary haven, but it cannot hold all of them, or for long. Trouble could follow on their heels at any moment, and there are too many people for Crescent Lake to support. Those who are willing to make a further trek by barge on into the West will follow him into a wilderness depopulated by war and scarred by the terrible magics of a thousand years ago and the Mage Wars. But the wilderness is not as "empty"...

Learning elemental magic from her witch aunt after her Tennessee coal miner father's black-lung death, Anna May falls in love with a stonemason who abandons his work as a gravestone cutter to pursue true art.

Duke Kordas Valdemar, the ruler of a small, bucolic duchy within the Eastern Empire, formulates a plan to allow him and his people to flee from the Empire's militant and tyrannical leaders after a mage discovers a way to place a Gate so far from the Empire that the Emperor cannot follow or find them.

Mags travels to the Bastion in search of who his parents were and a possible explanation about why he is being pursued by Valdemar's enemies in the fifth and final volume of the series following Redoubt.

Recounts how Mags, after an early life as a child, trained at the Herald's Collegium at Haven and became an undercover agent for the king.

"The rulers of tiny, impoverished Swansgaard have twelve daughters and one son. While the prince's future is assured, his twelve sisters must find their own fortunes. Disguising herself as Clarence, a sailor, Princess Clarice intends to work her way to the New World. When the crew rebels, Clarice/Clarence, an expert with rapier and dagger, sides with the handsome navigator, Dominick, and kills the cruel captain. Dominick leads the now-outlawed crew...