"Cassandra" is a story of a woman cursed with the ability to simultaneously experience the present and the near future. "The Threads of Time" revisits the Gates in Cherryh's 1976 novel "Gate of Ivrel". "Companions" is a novella about a ship stranded on a planet with Warren, the sole survivor, and Anne, a computer whose job it is to "protect" him (not unlike HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey"). "The Last Tower" is set on the edge of the land of faery where an old man lives in an old tower, the last bastion of magic against the onslaught of the Empire of Men from the East. In "The Brothers", Caith is damned by faeries for committing patricide and is cursed with Dubhain, a shapeshifting phooka, as his perpetual companion. Caith and Dubhain continue their journey in Cherryh's 1994 novel "Faery in Shadow".