At the zenith of its power and prosperity, Harappa is a highly refined urban conglomerate in the Indus Valley, visited by trade caravans and travelers from faraway lands.

Taya has risen from humble roots to become a fire seer in the Coalition of Mages. Eager to prove herself, she arrives in the town of Harappa to locate a “jackal”—a mage operating outside the Coalition’s authority—who has murdered three people.

It spreads over an area of more than a million sq km, an area much bigger than the Mesopotamian and the Egyptian Civilizations which are famous for their sepulchral splendor. Though technologically innovative, the Indus Civilization in marked by a modesty and the functionality of its architecture and artifacts.

Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, vol. 86. Of all the untapped veins to mine in ancient Indus studies, none may be as rich as the thousands of figurines excavated from all sites.