Gray One appears to be a simple merchant, traveling the remote Dardec forest with his fiery horse, Dee. But he is haunted by an image of a woman in black, crowned in fire. He sees her on the edge of dreams and in still ponds of black water. She never speaks to make clear what she wants of him. Believing that she is only a figment of imagination, he tries to forget her along with his frightening past. But when he meets a swordsman on a quest to find the missing queen of Shardland, he realizes that the woman is not just a phantom. She is the Ebony Queen. And his destiny is bound up with hers and that of the swordsman in strange ways.