For Kivrin Engle, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin - barely of age herself - finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.Winner of the Hugo Award 1993Winner of the Nebula Award 1993"A tour de force" - New York Times Book Review"Ambitious, finely detailed and compulsivly readable" - Locus"It is a book that feels fundamentally true; it is a book to live in" - Washington Post