When a young peasant girl is injured while hunting, she meets a strange, magical man who is a member of a despised race - Mujar. Truemen scorn the shape-shifting unmen for their odd, humble ways, and envy their power over the elements. Mujar do not use their powers for good or evil, they simply exist, immortal and apparently purposeless. Now a scourge is sweeping the land, armies of mounted warriors who cannot be defeated are wiping out Truemankind without mercy. They are known as the Black Riders, but no one knows where they come from or why they seem bent on exterminating every man, woman and child. Talsy traps the Mujar with gold, which has an odd effect on them, to make him help her, but her father intends to throw him in a Pit, from which he will be unable to escape. Talsy does not believe the Mujar deserves such a fate, so she frees him and begs him to take her with him on his journey. He agrees, and they set off across Shamarese, continuing his quest to find an old hermit's lost son. There is far more at stake than Talsy realises, however, and she has innocently stumbled upon the last free Mujar, who has the power to decide the fate of her race.