In a far future Universe where Mankind wars with the alien Sanguinis, the Lord Marith Severian, one of Mankind's most celebrated generals, is sent on a mission to parlay with the Sanguinis' greatest leader, the Polemarch Martens. This is to be the first official contact with the Sanguinis in well over 100 years. Before the parlay, Lord Marith Severian is introduced to a mysterious stranger, a man whom Marith is surprised to learn will have full authority to negotiate for and on behalf of Mankind. Before the parlay commences, the stranger, a man named Michael, insists on telling the story of his life, a mind-bending tale of a thousand years. "Let me begin by telling you that over the course of my long life, I have told many lies, have mastered the ability to lie and am in fact an accomplished liar . . . but the events I recount today are nothing but the truth. It is the story of loves gained and lost, a story of a search for the Philosopher's Stone, and a story of the Last of the Highborn Lords." This is how Michael begins his story, starting with his youth on the backwater world Ptolemy, then moving to the exotic planet Roland, the training grounds for the fearsome military order known as the Legio Gemini, and then ultimately to the great planet Kether, the most magnificent planet of all the Connected Worlds, a world known simply as the Celestial City.