When Great Grandmistress Alice Meynell, ruthless matriarch of the Great Guild of Telegraphers, brings her son to Invercombe, west of Bristol, she expects him to die there. Though her power and grace are legendary, not even she can halt her son's disease. Now ensconced in the magnificent old house, forgotten outpost of the Guild, with its disused weathertop, its formal gardens, its long tradition, at least there might come some tranquility to his death.The age of aether still reigns; its pale glow illuminating the land. All bear the mark of aether's strange influence, except the changelings, banished to Einfell, that strange land untouched by the Ages of Industry, that lies uneasy at England's troubled heart. And it is to Einfell that Alice turns in desperation, to plead for her son's life to one who once trusted her, and suffered the consequences.Ralph is cured. Far away from the filth of industrial London, he is drawn away from his family responsibilities to the world of nature and to a fisherman's daughter, Marion Price. Together they plan to run away, to defy the rule of the Guilds, even to change the world and how it understands itself.But his mother will not let love stand in the way of her lust for power, nor the very land she professes to love - even if it means plunging England into a long and bloody civil war. Read Less