The Pentarchy is a vast kingdom, created and controlled by the Heads of five Great Houses: Sandovar, Langstraad, Creon, Tuenth and Mirvanovir.  Together with five Minor Houses, the rulers of these Houses employ powers, political and arcane, to rule their lands, and to safeguard the Pentarchy's borders from the outside world.  Until recently the Pentarchy has been in the keeping of a regent, the heir to the high throne having vanished into the northern mountains some years previously.  Hollin Medicat Lir, the Head of House Langstraad, was engaged to marry the heir when she was a child and, as dissatisfaction with the current political situation seems to be leading to the possibility of civil war, Hollin suddenly finds herself at the center of a fight for the throne.  To twart those who would use her as a springboard for their own ambitions, Hollin suprises everyone by announcing that she will go in search of the missing heir herself.  Together with her loyal paxman, a disgraced musician named Daffyd, Hollin heads north, looking for a mysterious place known as the Citadel of Dreams.  While deeds of valour tangle with those of deceit, it may be the many shifting facets of magic, in all its guises, that will determine he ultimate fate of the realm.

And, far to the south, the the Scholastium Arcana, where the tenets of High magic are studied and taught, the reclusive and enigmatic Mage Masters, forbidden to meddle in the internal politics of the Pentarchy, watch and wait.