More than thirty years have passed in Osten Ard since the end of the Storm King’s deadly, magical war—a war that nearly doomed mankind. King Simon and Queen Miriamele, scarcely more than children when the Storm King was defeated, now rule over the human nations from the High Throne, but they have lost touch with their onetime allies, the immortal Sithi folk. Then Tanahaya, the first Sithi envoy since the end of the war, is ambushed on her way to the Hayholt, the ancient castle that is the seat of the High Throne.
While Tiamak, scholar and close friend of the king and queen, works with his wife Thelía to save Tanahaya’s life, Queen Miriamele and King Simon are away from the castle on a royal progress. Currently they are visiting the neighboring country of Hernystir and its King Hugh as part of a royal progress to the north, where Simon and Miriamele are troubled by the behavior of Hugh and his new love, the mysterious Lady Tylleth. Dowager queen Inahwen warns the royal couple’s advisor Count Eolair that King Hugh and Tylleth have revived worship of the Morriga, an ancient, dark, and bloodstained Hernystiri goddess.
Even while accompanying the royal family on their progress, Prince Morgan, the seventeen year old grandson of Simon and Miriamele, spends his days drinking and womanizing with his knightly companions Astrian, Olveris and old Porto. Morgan’s father, Prince John Josua—the only child of Simon and Miriamele—died of a strange illness some years earlier, leaving his wife Idela a widow, Morgan and his younger sister Lillia fatherless, and the king and queen, John Josua’s royal parents, still grieving.
When not nursing the poisoned Sithi envoy, royal counselor Tiamak is collecting books for a library to commemorate the late John Josua, but when his helper Brother Etan investigates some of the dead prince’s possessions, he discovers a banned and dangerous volume, A Treatise on the Aetheric Whispers. Tiamak is filled with foreboding, because the Treatise once belonged to the wizard Pryrates, now dead, who collaborated with the Storm King Ineluki to destroy humanity, though they ultimately failed.
The threats to Simon’s and Miriamele’s peaceful reign are increasing. In the icy north, in the cavern city of Nakkiga beneath the mountain Stormspike, the ageless ruler of the Norns, Queen Utuk’ku, has awakened from a years-long magical slumber. Her chief servant, the magician Akhenabi, summons the High Magister of Builders Viyeki to an audience with the queen, who declares her intention to attack the mortal lands again. The queen leads a strange ceremony that resurrects Ommu, one of the chief servants of the Storm King, though Ommu was thought to have perished forever during the Norns’ failed attempt to destroy the Hayholt and the mortal kingdoms.
In Elvritshalla, the capital of Rimmersgard, King Simon and Queen Miriamele are reunited with their old ally Sludig and his wife Alva, as well as their dear Qanuc friends Binabik and his wife Sisqi. They also meet the trolls’ daughter Qina and her betrothed, Little Snenneq.
The royal progress reaches Elvritshalla just in time to say farewell to Duke Isgrimnur, who dies shortly after their arrival. His last request to Simon and Miriamele is that they renew their search for Prince Josua (Miriamele’s uncle, Simon’s mentor, and John Josua’s namesake) and his twin children, Derra and Deornoth, who mysteriously vanished twenty years earlier. Later Little Snenneq, who is Binabik’s apprentice, meets Prince Morgan and predicts that he will become as important to Morgan as Binabik became to Morgan’s grandfather, King Simon.
In a castle in southern Rimmersgard where the royal party is guesting on their way home, Simon realizes he has not dreamed in many days. He consults Binabik, who creates a talisman to help him. That very night, Simon dreams of his dead son and the voice of the child Leleth, who had once whispered to him in dreams three decades earlier. Leleth tells him “the children are coming back”. After Simon frightens the whole household while sleepwalking, Miriamele destroys the talisman, and Simon again loses the ability to dream.
In the still more distant north, the half-blood Sacrifice Nezeru, daughter of Norn noble Viyeki and human woman Tzoja, is sent as part of a “Talon” of Norn warriors to retrieve the bones of Hakatri, brother of Ineluki, the defeated Storm King. Nezeru and her fellows, commanded by their chieftain Makho, find the bones being venerated by mortals, but Makho and the Norns take them and escape from the angry islanders. During the escape, Nezeru fails to kill one of their enemies (a child) and is severely punished for it by Makho.
However, before the Talon can return to Nakkiga with Hakatri’s remains, they are met by the Norn Queen’s arch-magician Akhenabi, who takes the bones and sends the Talon on a new quest to Mount Urmsheim to collect the blood of a living dragon. To aid in this dangerous feat, he sends with them an enslaved giant named Goh Gam Gar.
While traveling eastward towards Mount Urmsheim, the Norn Talon encounters a mortal man named Jarnulf, a former slave in Nakkiga who has vowed to destroy the Norns and their undying queen, Utuk’ku. Because the Talon has lost its Echo—their trained communicator—Jarnulf, hoping to further his own private aims, convinces the Norns to take him on as a guide. They all travel eastward towards the mountain, last known home of dragons, and on the way Jarnulf overhears the Norns discussing their queen’s great plan to defeat the mortals by recovering something called “The Witchwood Crown”.
In central Rimmersgard, the Talon encounters the royal party, and Jarnulf is able to get a secret message to Queen Miriamele and King Simon that the Norn Queen is looking for something called the Witchwood Crown. Simon, Miriamele, and their advisors are alarmed, and they have seen enough signs of renewed hostility from the Norns that they take Jarnulf’s message seriously, though this is the first they have heard of him.
In the City of Nabban, a Wrannawoman named Jesa cares for Serasina, the infant daughter of Duke Saluceris and Duchess Canthia, Simon’s and Miriamele’s allies. Tensions in Nabban are rising: Count Dallo Ingadaris has allied with Saluceris’s brother Earl Drusis to fan fears of the nomadic Thrithings-men whose lands border on Nabban. Drusis accuses Saluceris of being too cowardly to properly punish the barbarians and drive them back into the grasslands.
Meanwhile, on the plains of the Thrithings, gray-eyed Unver, an adopted member of the Crane Clan, and his companion Fremur, participate in a raid on a Nabbanai settlement. As they escape, Unver saves Fremur’s life, perhaps in part because Unver hopes to marry Fremur’s sister, Kulva.
Sir Aelin catches up with the royal party, bringing messages for his great-uncle, Count Eolair. Lord Pasevalles, Eolair’s temporary replacement at the Hayholt, sends his worries about Nabban, and Queen Inahwen of Hernystir sends news that King Hugh and Lady Tylleth are growing ever more open in their worship of terrible old gods. Eolair sends Aelin with this bad news to a trustworthy ally, Earl Murdo. But while seeking shelter from a passing storm, Aelin and his men spend the night in a border castle with Baron Curudan, leader of King Hugh’s private, elite troops. During a storm that night, Aelin sees the dim shapes of a vast Norn army outside the fort, and then watches Curudan meet with humankind’s deadliest enemies. But before Aelin and his men can escape with the news of this treachery, they are captured and imprisoned by Curudan’s Silver Stags.
In the Norn city of Nakkiga, Viyeki is sent by Lord Akhenabi on a secret mission to the mortal lands with his Builders, but he is accompanied by a small army of Norn soldiers as well. Tzoja discovers that with Viyeki gone, her life is threatened by her lover’s wife, Lady Khimabu, who hates Tzoja for giving Viyeki a child, Nezeru, when Khimabu could not. Tzoja knows she must escape if she wishes to live.
As Tzoja thinks of her past with the Astaline sisters in Rimmersgard and her childhood in Kwanitupul, it becomes clear Tzoja is actually Derra, one of the lost twins of Prince Josua and his Thrithings wife Vorzheva. Tzoja flees to Viyeki’s empty lake-house in a cavern deep beneath the city.
Their royal progress finally returned to the Hayholt, Simon and Miriamele ask Tiamak to honor Isgrimnur’s dying request with a new search for Prince Josua. Tiamak sends his assistant Brother Etan south to try to discover what happened to Josua when he disappeared twenty years earlier.
Meanwhile, challenged by Little Snenneq, Morgan climbs Hjeldin’s Tower, the Hayholt’s most infamous spot, and is almost killed. He believes he saw long-dead Pryrates while he was atop the tower, and swears Little Snenneq to secrecy.
With evidence of the Norn resurgence everywhere, Simon and Miriamele realize these ancient and magical foes are too powerful to face alone. They decide to try to contact the Sithi, especially their old allies Jiriki and Aditu. At Simon’s urging, Miriamele reluctantly agrees to send their grandson Prince Morgan with Eolair and a host of soldiers to Aldheorte Forest to find the Sithi and return their poisoned messenger Tanahaya for more healing.
Viyeki travels south from Nakkiga toward mortal lands, accompanied by an army of Norns who plan to attack the mortal fortress of Naglimund. Viyeki is told that he and his Builders are going to excavate the tomb beneath the fortress of the legendary Tinukeda’ya Ruyan Vé, called “the Navigator”, and salvage his magical armor, though Viyeki does not understand how this can happen without causing a war with the mortals. Tinukeda’ya, also called “Changelings”, came to Osten Ard with the Sithi and Norn, though they are not the same as these other immortals. In Osten Ard, the Tinukeda’ya have taken on many shapes and roles.
Prince Morgan and Count Eolair finally contact the Sithi at the edge of Aldheorte Forest. The immortals have abandoned their settlement of Jao é-Tinukai’i and their matriarch Likimeya was attacked by humans and has fallen into a deep, magical sleep. Khendraja’aro, of the ruling Sithi Year-Dancing House, has declared himself Protector of their people and refuses to help the mortals in any way, causing friction with Likimeya’s children, Jiriki and Aditu. Aditu is pregnant, a rarity among the Sithi. The father is Yeja’aro, nephew and militant supporter of Khendraja’aro.
In the Thrithings, Unver challenges and kills his rival for Fremur’s sister Kulva. But Kulva’s brother, Thane Odrig, does not want to give his sister to an outsider and slits her throat instead. Unver kills Odrig and flees the Crane Clane to return to the Stallion Clan of his mother Vorzheva. Unver, we learn, is actually Deornoth, the other of Josua and Vorzheva’s twins. When Unver demands his mother tell him why he was sent away and where his sister has gone, Vorzheva says he was sent away by order of her father, Thane Fikolmij, and that Derra ran away shortly after.
Thane Gurdig, husband to Vorzheva’s sister Hyara and Fikolmij’s successor, comes to attack Unver, and in the confusion Vorzheva kills her now old and infirm father, Fikolmij. A giant flock of crows appears out of nowhere to attack Gurdig and his allies, causing many Thrithings-folk to declare that Unver may be the new Shan, the universal monarch of the Thrithings. Unver kills Gurdig, and is then declared the new thane of the Stallion Clan.
Far to the northeast, the Talon and Jarnulf manage to capture a small, young dragon, but then the mother dragon appears. During the struggle Chieftain Makho is badly burned by dragon blood and one of the other Talon members is killed, but the rest manage to escape and begin dragging the captive young dragon down the mountain.
Eolair and Morgan are returning from their embassy to the Sithi to their camp beside Aldheorte Forest, but discover that their party has been attacked and all the soldiers wiped out by Thrithings-men, some of whom are still there, looking for victims and pillage. Eolair and Morgan become separated and the prince ends up lost back in ancient Aldheorte.
Back in the Hayholt, Queen Miriamele and King Simon are invited to attend an important wedding in populous and troubled Nabban. Hoping the presence of the High Throne will help solve the problems between Duke Saluceris and his brother Earl Drusis, Simon and Miriamele accept the invitation. With the increased threat of the Norns and disturbing news from Hernystir they cannot both go to Nabban, so they decide Miriamele will attend the wedding while Simon stays in the Hayholt.
Royal counselor Lord Pasevalles meets his secret lover Princess Idela, John Josua’s widow. When she gives him a letter from Nabban he had dropped, Pasevalles sees the seal is broken and fears she has read the letter. He pushes Idela down a flight of stairs and when the fall does not kill her, he breaks her neck with his boot.
In Aldheorte Forest the onetime Sithi envoy Tanahaya at last awakes from her terrible illness and is reunited with Jiriki and Aditu. Despite her recovery, the future seems dark. It is clear that the Norn Queen Utuk’ku intends war on both the Sithi and the human world.