When Djorn recovers consciousness lying on a parched rugged mountainside in the full heat of a blazing sun, he realizes that he hasn't any idea of whom or where he is. As he gathers his wits about him and starts on the long climb down, the landscape changes and his descent takes him down into the lush valleys below. Faced with worrying unfamiliar vegetation, his fears are compounded when he is suddenly confronting by a frightening alien creature. He is amazed to discover that the creature is telepathic and friendly, and that despite its alieninity and appearance it is sentiment and highly intelligent. He is further stunned when it solemnly informs him that he himself is tinged with an aura of sorcery, but although such iniquity is at present subjugating much of the land, it is prepared to accept that he is bereft of such evil. After receiving some brief disputed hospitality in its village, he is given some helpful instruction and sent on his way to integrate with those of his own kind in the plains further below, along with the warning to avoid the lands and conquests of the dark emperor and his malevolent living god. Unfortunately his journey is intercepted by fate, and he is inexplicably drawn into a conflict of imperial brutality and powerful black sorcery and magic, that propels him into a bitter struggle to survive.