Fleeing the Pale Ones, a Kesserit prince named Tathas finds himself bound on a quest any sane Braxin should fear more than death itself. Leaving her home in search of her own heritage, an Azean Mediator named Zara discovers there are landscapes within herself more terrible than any alien battlefield. Seeking her long-lost kin, the renegade psychic Rho will find them both, and in them discover the threads of a conspiracy so vast it encompasses all of human-explored space, and stretches back in time to the days of an infamous vendetta....