Count Sessine is about to die for the very last time. Chief Scientist Gadfium is about to receive the mysterious message she has been waiting for from them Plain of Sliding Stones. And Bascule the Teller, in search of an ant, is about to enter the chaos of the crypt. And everything is about to change. For this is the time of the Encroachment and, although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close...

In a distant-future, highly advanced society of seemingly unlimited technological capability, a crime is committed within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one--maybe two--people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once...

Horza, a Changer, finds himself at the center of an epic galactic confrontation between the fanatical Idirans and the communistic Culture, made up of humans ruled by the Mind machines that they have created.