concubine of Wen Zhou, the new prime minister of Kitai, and is able to save his life against further assassination attempts. Xu Bihai, the military governor in the western city of Chenyao, who covets the Sardian horses, unsuccessfully attempts to gain control of Shen through his attractive daughter. At Chenyao Shen is befriended by Sima Zian, a famous poet some twenty years Shen's senior, who accompanies Shen to Xinan and emerges as one of the few people that Shen can trust unreservedly. He also informs Shen that his sister, Li-Mei, has been named a princess sent north to the Bogü as a bride for the son of the Bogü leader. Before reaching the capital, Shen is approached by the most powerful figures in Kitai, each trying to assess their prospects for acquiring control of the famed Sardian horses. These include Wen Jian, the Precious Consort, a dazzling young woman of good family with whom the elderly Emperor Taizu has become infatuated, and An Li, known as 'Roshan', the military governor of barbarian origins who has become an increasingly powerful figure, commanding the forces of three military districts in the northeast. Shen Tai continues toward Xinan, and as he approaches the great metropolis he is swept into palace intrigue. At Xinan there is a brief reunion with Spring Rain. A parallel plotline to the story of Shen Tai follows his sister Shen Li-Mei's forced exile beyond the Long Wall to serve the empire by becoming the bride of the khagan or leader of the Bogü ruling clan. This idea was supported by the eldest Shen brother, Shen Liu, chief advisor to Prime Minister Wen Zhou, as a way of advancing his own interests at the court. In his early military career, before the novel's opening, when Shen Tai had been on a previous military expedition beyond the Long Wall that protects the northern borders of Kitai, he had interrupted a magic rite being performed on Meshag, a kinsman of the Bogü ruler, that would have transformed him into a wolf spirit, but that had progressed far enough to create a link between Meshag and a wolf. Grateful to Shen Tai for having interrupted the shamanistic ritual, Meshag intervenes to separate Shen Li-Mei from her escort and with the assistance of a number of wolves, including the wolf with which Meshag has been linked. Meshag then undertakes an epic journey across the