Inya, called Lady of Moontooth, has secluded herself in a dark tower that guards dimensional rifts, rents in the fabric of reality. Self-exiled from her home dimension, where she had once failed in her duties of guardianship, Inya planted her tower in the world of Astareth, where its walls rise out of the hills like fangs tearing at the sky. She lives there alone, except for the company of a few faithful elementals and spirits, who tend to her needs and those of the Tower. When the upstart mage Murl Amrey asks her for training, she refuses at first; but as a favor to an old friend, she agrees to teach the volatile young man. Intending only to equip him with enough skill to obtain a much-desired Styrcian crystal from a distant dimension, she underestimates both his impetuosity and his power. Soon Amrey will grow beyond her control. He will take on the conqueror's name of Kar Kalim, with the intention of crushing Inya's world underfoot.
