Swift is Wraeththu. He lives in Forever, a rambling mansion which guards his youth and adolescence from most of the turbulence that attends the first years of Wraeththu pre-eminence. His family is a paradigm of the struggles within the nascent culture: Terzian, his father, and leader of the Varrs, has begun to slaughter all non-Varrs barbarically. Cobweb, his 'mother', has retreated into mysticism and mind-power in horrified reaction to his consort's brutality.

And then Cal returns to stir up the long-buried past. Swift is confronted with responsibilities he is unused to, as he is caught up, first in a bitter family struggle, and later in a journey that will end by changing Wraeththu dominions irrevocably.