Marak has laways hidden his "madness"—voices and visions that beckon him toward a silver tower. When betrayal brings him face-to-face with the dictator of his world, the mysterious Ila, Marak is assigned a seemingly suicidal mission to cross his planet's vast desert and find that tower. Miraculously reaching his goal, he is given another, even more impossible, mission by the beings within the tower itself: lead his people to safety before the deadly hammer of the Ila's enemies falls.