"In his black-walled fortress at Inuyama, the warlord Iida Sadamu surveys his famous nightingale floor. Constructed with exquisite skill, it sings at the tread of each human foot. No assassin can cross it unheard." The youth Takeo has been brought up in a remote mountain village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people who have taught him only the ways of peace. But unbeknownst to him, his father was a celebrated assassin and a member of...

The second book in the Tales of the Otori trilogy continues the epic story of Otori Takeo and Shirakawa Kaede, the young lovers whose fate is played out in an ancient Oriental world, where ritualised codes of high honour counter the cruelty of savage blood-feuds. Takeo has pledged his life to the Tribe, a secret clan of spies and assassins who claim his legendary supernatural skills for their own ruthless purposes, in doing so he must deny his birthright...