Gimel. Ur. Suoche. An unnameable desert. Shambhala. Xanadu. A boy enters manhood while exploring the world - and finally finds home among a frightening, humble people. Given the wild gift of scrying, Adam is subjugated to a mad emperor and slavers, meets the Prince of the Upper Air, runs from the Assassin's Guild, gets lost in an impassable desert, is overwhelmed by the maddening magic of the East, and finally finds his place among a people literally in the middle of nowhere. Yet even there the rising tide of, ahem, civilization - of war and commercialism and rampant greed - threatens to inundate him and his adopted people. This is the second volume in the monumental series of seven novels, "The Seven Last Days."