In Cengarn, Rhodry of the silver daggers - half-elven, half-human - is beset by strange dreams. A dark-haired enchantress, the Raven Woman, is haunting his sleep, and he can find no release, even in the arms of Dallandra, his lover.

Little does he know that his feud with the Raven Woman goes back over three hundred years, to a time when the throne of Deverry stood under threat of civil war. In those days, the young king's counsin, Lilli, was forced by her scheming mother to scry for omens, and she saw terrible visions: great red wyverns sweeping down from the mountains to plunge like hawks upon a herd opf feeding swine....

The fancies of an idle mind? Or omens foretelling bloodshed and disaster for the clan of the Boar?