Sister Fidelma returns in another spellbinding story of murder and intrigue in seventh-century Ireland--when the murder of a high cleric threatens to result in a bloody war between two of Ireland's kingdoms. In AD 644 the Venerable Dacan, a respected scholar of the Celtic Church, is murdered while on a visit to the Abbey of Ros Ailithir in the Irish Kingdom of Muman. Dacan, unfortunately, was the close confidant of the hotheaded young king of the neighboring kingdom of Fearna, who is using Dacan's murder as an excuse to provoke war. Sister Fidelma, an advocate of the Brehon courts, is summoned by the dying king of Muman to solve the brutal killing and to prevent the incipient war between the two kingdoms. But at the remote abbey, Fidelma soon discovers there are far more sinister forces than mere political intrigue at work behind the mystery of Dacan's death. She must quickly unravel a most complicated mystery if she is to prevent the coming war--and preserve her own life as well. With a mix of historical detail and deft characterization, Peter Tremayne once again brings ancient Ireland to full, vivid life.