Four summers ago, Ulvar did not return from a trading trip and disappeared. His young wife, Snefrid, is annoyed by the people to whom Ulvar owes money, and also by the dangerous owners of the mysterious locked casket he left behind. Overcome by troubles on all sides, Snefrid decides on an unheard of thing - to go overseas, to Garda, to look for her husband. And to make this journey possible, she agrees to what she has long shied away from - to accept the rod of the völva from her aunt, the sorceress Hravenhild, and with it responsibilities that are dangerous in themselves. Under the name of her aunt, she sets off on a journey, and her only protector does not know that under the shamanic mask of an experienced sorceress her young heir is hiding... (The novel is connected with other books in the “Sveneld” series by the theme of the campaign to the Khazar Sea, in which some of the characters participated.)