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The wilderness of oak, ash and thorn that men call the Forest of Andred existed long before the Saxons entered Britain or Caesar's legions pressed against Kentish resistence, and even before the first iron-using Celts set foot on the island. Here lives the clan of the mandrake--the strange, gnarled vegetable folk. Here trods the unicorn, with blue vapor curling softly from nostrils soft as a woman's breast and dainty, precise hooves lethal as maces. Here are the sacred groves long abandoned, where Duids once fed the trees with human blood.

Through this forest of sorcery and society governed by the sword travels Felmid mac Fal, Bard of Erin, descendant of Druids and the Tuatha de Danann--the ancient faery race of Ireland, armed only with his harp and the fierce magical power of his poetry...

This is the tale of one Felimid mac Fal: vagabond, roustabout, poet -- and magician! For Felimid is a poet of the old Irish blood: a fully trained bard of Erin. And his is the sort of poetry that can sing shy dryads out of their trees and dragons into slumber and juggle the fixed round of the seasons as a jester juggles knives.

A man who saw the bard's pretty face and the harp on his back might think him a simple minstrel. That mistake could cost him his life.

But a woman who saw the bard's pretty face might have other ideas... particularly if she is Gudrun Blackhair, the most notorious pirate on the northern sea!

I am called Felimid mac Fal. I am a bard of the old blood, a lesser degree of Druid. Where I come from, bards have been knows to sing armies to defeat or victory and kings off their throne or on to them. Descended from the faery folk, the Tuatha de Dannann, my line's been poets and harpers in Erin since the world was new, and magic's in our heart-marrow.

She is called Gudrun Blackhair... as well as names a good deal less polite. She is the most dangerous pirate on the open seas, master of the enchanted ship Ormungandr, and the woman of my heart. If you wish to know more than that, ask the ballad singers and gossip mongers at any tavern. Half of what you hear will be fact, half will be lies, and even I can no longer separate the two. Yet this story, perhaps the strangest of them all, of shapeshiters and sorceresses and the sea-dwelling Children of Lir, is naught but the gods' own truth... on my honor as a bard.

HE IS FELIMID MAC FAL, once a bard of Ireland. Now he uses his wits and his magic in the service of his lover, the most notorious pirate on the seas of ancient Britain.

SHE IS GUDRUN BLACKHAIR, the lusty, legendary pirate chieftain who commands the sorcerous ship "Ormungandr" and numbers the shape-shifting Children of Lir among her crew.

Together they've sailed through adventure after adventure, and never known defeat. But Gudrun's many enemies are gathering, and Odin himself will lead them into battle against her. How can a poet and a pirate hope to defeat a god?

This is #4 in Bard Series.

"Some say that you are Fergus mac Buthi's grandson, come back from five years' wandering. They say that you are a bard of the third rank... They say that you carry the harp of Cairbre, which is among the Three Remaining Treasures of Erin... I think it is false."

When Felimid mac Fel returns to the land of his fathers, to the glorious shores of Erin, all is not as he left it. The Company of Bards is sullied by members who take advantage of their talents and spread disenchantment among the people - ruining their livelihoods with Satires of Cursing and other such abuses. With the aid of his magical harp, Golden Singer, Felimid easily rebuffs the challenge of one such, Ruarc Sunspear, but the demonic threats of Sunspear's mentor, Dicuil the Fiery, are not so lightly shaken off.