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In the dawn of time, women ruled, and the people had no word for war. Then the horsemen came.

Sarama is the last of the White Mare's servants, descended from an ancient line conquered long ago by warrior tribes. Her father is the king of one such tribe. Her twin brother Agni is the king's heir. But she is heir to an older world, and a different way.

A sacred vision calls the White Mare westward, and Sarama follows. There, she finds a land where women rule, and men serve, and their language has no word for war. But the horsemen are coming. Sarama must choose between her own people and the people whom she has come to love, and find a way to save them both.

For a long, brutal century, the Kingdom of Lower Egypt has been occupied by the "Vile Asiatics," the conquerors called the Shepherd Kings. With their horses and chariots they overwhelmed the armies of Egypt and swept over the Delta and the sacred cities.

Iry, daughter of an old noble house, the Sun Ascendant, has been enslaved by the bearded conquerors. But her new master is born of a different blood, son of the priestess of an ancient rite, the cult of the Horse Goddess and her avatar, the White Mare. The Mare's priestess-servant is dead--and the Mare chooses Iry, the child of a land without horses, to be her successor.

Meanwhile, in the wider world, the Pharaoh of Upper Egypt is arming to take back the lost kingdom. He forms such an alliance as his ancient land has never seen before, with the seafarers of Crete and the White Mare's servant, and rides to war against the Shepherd Kings.

A young girl-child first dared to mount on the back of a mare, but the priests declared that this must be a mans privilege only. They stole her achievement and made a new legend giving that achievement to her brother. But the spirit of the horse is a Goddess, and Horse Goddess would not be deprived of her servants.

Long years after the White Mare came to the people of the Mothers, bringing the wild horsemen from the sea of grass and changing the world forever, the world is changing again. The Mother of Lir is dead, her heir cast out amid dire omens. War is coming--such a war as the people have never seen, fought with a new and terrible weapon: the chariot.

Rhian, potter's child and White Mare's chosen, ventures with Emry the prince of Lir into the sea of grass and undertakes to steal the enemy's weapon. But that enemy is not at all what they expected. In Minas, prince and maker of chariots, and his mother Aera, they find a remarkable and deadly kinship--and forge an alliance that will be both the destruction and the salvation of Lir.