Jaldis and Rhion make a scant living, like most freelance wizards in a hostile universe, from luck-spells, love-potions and fortune-telling. Love and magic are dangerous practices: combining the two can be lethal, as Rhion discovers when he sells a love-potion to the wrong woman. Before long, the wizards are running for their lives, leaving a rare and dangerous spell unfinished.

Years pass before Jaldis can repeat the spell: to open a Dark Well across the Void. From the Well he hears a voice crying for help: magic in their world is being destroyed - they need a wizard to save them...