Theus is sold into servanthood by his poverty-stricken family, and taken by his kindly master on a journey across a continent, following the course of the Landwide River. He learns a great many things that he has never known or dreamed about the world beyond his family's small farm. He begins to learn the secrets of the memory stones, the extraordinary objects that can store information for people. He learns to handle weapons, and puts his knowledge to use in the turbulent world he experiences. And he learns that even though a beautiful young daughter of a high noble family is beyond a commoner's reach, he can dream about breaking through that social barrier!

Theus fled from Great Forks - he fled from the guards chasing after him, and the job with the memory stones, as well as his friends. Most painfully, he fled from Coriae, the fascinating daughter of the ancient house of nobility that had befriended him. He thought that he had a straight-forward path to escape the city - take a ship, work on a barge, voyage away from Great Forks, and when the troubles had passed, he planned to return to all that he left behind. But evil powers brewing in far-off places are spreading chaos across the world, and Theus becomes snared in the troubles that seem to have nothing to do with him, until he finds that he has fallen into the center of the evil. Desperate to escape, Theus manages to win small battles, and seems to be back on track towards the success he has envisioned for himself. But evil is not ready to let him go so easily.

Theus has experienced freedom and slavery, affection and spite, wealth and poverty - all within the past year of his life as he has become a wide-eyed traveler exposed to every corner of the known world. But his adventures are about to grow more consequential and intense as the gods of the land begin to rely on him personally and exclusively to travel from conflict to conflict, as they try to use him to tamp down the outbreak of evil and violence that is threatening every human in the lands ruled by Stoke. Theus finds that he must hurry to and from the cities he has already discovered, Stoke and Southsands and Greenfalls - even the Jewel Hills. And he will renew acquaintances with people he had met in each of those areas as he tries to keep up with the increasing outbreaks of corruption and intrigue that threaten the world he knows. This is the third book in the four book Memory Stone series.

Theus will face tests, challenges, and adventures as he slowly takes a round-about path towards his final confrontation with Donal, in the fourth book of the Memory Stones series. Heartbroken, poisoned, traveling in stunned pain, Theus will return to the great cities of the kingdom as he moves away from his past, and towards the unimaginable battles that await him in his future.