Forgotten now are the mystical verses of the ancient Song of the Eternal Aeons. In years gone by, ritual incantation of those verses blessed the realm and energized its people with the cosmic forces of the universe. Today - without them - the land is dark, storms are frequent, crops fail, and peasants starve. In the colleges, scholars turn away from books to play obsessively a massive, magical board game that extinguishes thought, thrusting its best players into eternal slumbers broken by feverish dreams. From those dreams arise malevolent forces hungry to devour and destroy all things living. One remedy alone exists: recovery of the Song. But where in that vast, tortured land - or elsewhere - can anyone find its lost verses? And who will wield the Song against the fiendish creatures that now ravish the land and slaughter its people?