A vicious act of greed that wrecked the world... The Khentors, on their great Horned Horses, had wandered the Great Plain for longer than memory, and in all that time the magnificent Golden People, with their red metal spears and walled towns, had been Masters of the Khentorei. That the Golden Ones should take women as tribute was not unusual. But now they had taken Nai, a priestess -- and not just a prestess-- for Nai, Chosen of the Gods, was the Luck of her Tribe and sister to Mor'anh, named for the Lightning Spear of the Sky. The Golden Ones had loosed a force they did not understand -- a force that would write its fiery vengeance across the face of their world and shatter it forever.