The man Archmage, looks old but a vigour belies his greying beard, his bent back. And he grows younger and stronger as he opens the door into the Memory Palace.

In this sequel to The Memory Palace, fantasy crosses over to the real world as the Malthassan Archmage Koschei Corbillion becomes Guy Parados, his creator. When the magician Koschei escaped through the mind of his creator Guy Parados into the world where he is fiction, he became Guy Parados, and Parados became the Red Horse in the land of Malthassa...his own invention, he believed. But Malthassa has deeper roots, and it is there the Red Horse must go.