Alector's Choice

L. E. Modesitt introduced a new fantasy world, Corus, in Legacies, Darknesses, and Scepters. Now he returns to that world in the fourth book of the Corean Chronicles.
Alector's Choice takes place several thousand years before the events chronicled in the Legacies trilogy, at the time when Corus is ruled by the Talent-magic of the Duarchy. The Myrmidons of Justice command the skies riding their fearsome pteridons. All Corus seems prosperous and at peace.
As the Alector Colonel of Myrmidons, despite his limited Talent, Dainyl is the fourth-highest-ranking military officer of the Duarchy. Alectors are a race apart from the normal inhabitants of Corus, having come from another world. After the concealed murder of his immediate superior by the Marshal of Myrmidons, Dainyl is sent on an observation mission to Dramur to see how a battalion of mounted rifles handles an apparent rebellion.
Commanding one of the companies in the battalion is Captain Mykel, a young officer potentially Talented and unaware that, should he ever discover that Talent, his life is forfeit, for Mykel is not an Alector, and only Alectors are allowed to use Talent.
Both the Alector and the man are commanded by apparent incompetents, and the rebellion, which is real, spirals out of control, spurred by treachery, corruption, and greed - and aided by the reappearance of the ancient soarers, a fragile humanoid race of flying beings thought to have become extinct. Mykel and Dainyl must struggle to discover what lies behind the machinations in which they are entangled before they are destroyed by them, and neither can afford to reveal the extent of his Talent.