Merry and her merry band of men are continuing on their quest to produce an heir in this book. Several of the guards have had powers restored to them, and tattoos are magically appearing on their bodies, bonding them to Merry in some sort of bizarre way. They somehow cause basically impossible things to happen through sex with each other. Merry also has another encounter with King Sholto, in which we learn more about him and things that happened to him. I really like Sholto, and am looking forward to continuing his story. Merry's crazy cousin Cel starts getting real crazy.