Enter a dream-like and fantastic world: a reality both familiar and disjointed. 400 years ago in the Civil War, one region refuted the conflict and fought to protect its people. It endures; beyond all maps, a land of limitless marshes and scattered communities; autonomous, independent and aggressively neutralist; a land of ancient tradition and savage law: the Old Country. In the east, the War of the Line rages interminably, a conflict so long no-one seems to remember its purpose, only that it must be sustained. When the cathedral is destroyed Alex and his wife flee the city and head for the Old Country - for a home, and a chance for peace. But the world and the past are not easily left behind. When the floodwaters begin to rise, when the investigating agents close in, with love fractured and the imperatives of power bearing down, how will they find the moral courage to make a stand in the face of the cataclysm? How far will they have to go, to find a measure of peace? And who is Roman Thorn?