Veteran wizard Greylsan Amberglass, ostensibly on a mission to gather chronicles from The Fourth Council's entowered wizards, follows the trail of a doomed borderland margrave in search of his corrupted and dying land's missing Arcory Stones. The search leads him through the Alliance of the Thirteen Greater and Lesser Kingdoms to some uncomfortable truths about how the magic is being conducted in the kingdoms and disturbing answers to own his personal quest.