A new generation of the Keeper royal line is coming to adulthood. Unrest is growing once again in the Second Kingdom, now under the governance of the new Senate. Dakhar leads the Senate as a seer with bornsight, but the only other members so far gathered are Bredin, a genius healer who denies his powerful healing gift, and Magnis, a bard with the gift of heartsight crippled by constant conflict with his beyah, Valeryn's elder daughter Seliyah. One more man in possession of a great gift has been discovered: a strange young man with the rare gift of dreamwalking has appeared in Dakhar's dreams. No one knows where he lives, only that he is a prisoner in lands farther east than any Keeper maps have yet documented. Now his beyah has arrived in the Second Kingdom, looking for help in her search for the dreamwalker, and she turns out to be Dakhar's illegitimate daughter.
If that were insufficient reason to for his journey, Dakhar also receives word from Valeryn and Lucien that the Pamirsi patriarch Liam secretly asks his help. Liam's heir Rasmus disappeared twenty years previously after the death of his young wife. Part of the kingdom's unrest is caused by the fact that Liam's only other heirs are Lucien's twin sons Xander and Xavier. If Rasmus could be found alive and persuaded to return as heir, Liam reasons, the moderate factions in his clan could regain control over the extremists.
For the peace of the kingdom and the strength of the Senate, then, Dakhar must assemble a company that must leave all known lands and venture into the ancient east. With no route but that provided by his own and his daughter Haidee's instincts, Dakhar must seek these two missing men. Along the way, he and his company will face Umbrya dragons and strange immortals, subterranean paths and long-lost kingdoms of forgotten history. Their greatest danger is not so much that they will lose their way as that they might just lose their very selves.