As the story goes, after the great clan wars, two sisters dwelt on the edge of the canyons, in the manor of the Lord and Lady McCormick known as Bainsford. Each of them bears their own burdens of birth. Elsie the scars and markings of her people, the na hEireann, men of science and discovery. Annalicia the condition she inherited from her father, a hideous, violent man - an outsider. Known only as Dances with the Butterflies, and the Wishing Woman of Johnsport, by the original peoples, the Daoine Realta, the sisters are to be avoided at all costs. They are dangerous to be sure, and hold a deep and mysterious power beneath their flesh. One they hide in the elusive Butterfly Fields of legend. It was these sisters, who brought the war between He Who Created All Things and the ruler of the Land of Eternal Flames to the Lowlands. The only hope for the Lowlands, and indeed the world, is the secret that lies in the depths of the keep of the Daoine Realta citadel."