Sekenre, son of Vashtem the sorcerer, lives in his father's strange house. They're not a very happy family, his father the most feared man in all the City of Reeds, maybe in the whole country and his mother being murdered by him when Sekenre is still quite young. And it doesn't get any better when Vashtem dies and travels upriver to the Land of the Dead. When Vashtem - now dead - also kills Sekenre's sister, and the citizens of the City of Reeds turns against him, he sees no other way than to seek the advice of the ancient Sybil, who lives under the city. She gives him the means to, while still alive, travel upriver to the Land of the Dead, the stomach of Surat-Kemad, the crocodile god. He undertakes the trip, but nothing turns out the way he hoped.

A self-standing companion to Darrell Schweitzer's British Fantasy Award-nominated The Mask of the Sorcerer, the present volume collects all the Sekenre stories, which proved very popular when originally published in Weird Tales, Interzone, Adventures in Sword & Sorcery, and elsewhere.