Villages along the Graywash River are emptying.

At first, Sir Alaric and Mira hear only rumors.

Cattle dying after drinking from the river. Families abandoning their homes. Ferries closing early. Travelers refusing to continue south. Some speak of sickness. Others insist the water itself has become dangerous.

Then Alaric and Mira reach an abandoned settlement.

The houses remain intact. Food has been left behind. Coins still lie upon an inn table. Livestock graze unattended in nearby fields. There are no bodies, no signs of violence, and no clear reason why so many people simply packed what they could and fled downstream.

Continuing along the Graywash, they discover that every village seems to possess a different version of the same growing disaster.

Stories of poisoned water become reports of plague. Smoke becomes evidence of attack. Frightened travelers carry warnings from one settlement to the next, each repetition adding new certainty to things no one has actually witnessed.

Soon roads are closing, trade is faltering, homes are burning, and desperate communities begin acting upon rumors faster than anyone can determine whether they are true.

Alaric and Mira set out to find the source.

But the farther they travel, the less the crisis resembles a single mystery.

And somewhere along the Graywash, someone may already have discovered that fear spreading through a kingdom can be useful.

The River of Ash is the seventh book in The Alaric Investigations, a historical mystery of abandoned villages, spreading panic, burning settlements, and the dangerous distance between what people witness and what they come to believe.