S'tai, an outcast from the nomadic Jurii tribe, stumbles across the body of an injured huntress. His instinct is to abandon her to the Baasei desert, but she tells him the story of the ambush of her hunting patrol, by mysterious men with weapons that breathed fire. Burdened by his circumstantial responsibility for her, he decides to accompany the huntress, whose name he does not even know, in a quest to find her kidnapped life mate- a hunter named Idrae. Meanwhile, in the heart of a mountain far from the hunting grounds of the Jurii, there is a magnificent city. Its inhabitants are the highly civilised and self-righteous Felizco, ruled by their divine Queen and her subjects in the Arabou court. One such subject, Lady Yresta, is as vain and cruel as she is strikingly beautiful. Nonetheless, she finds herself falling in love with a handsome slave, pulled from the "uncivilised" desert surrounding their home. His name? Idrae...