The titular protagonist, Vanyel, has returned to his after being away for prolonged engagement with Valdemar’s bordering nemesis, Karse. As he checks in with various family members and friends, he is the recipient of a recurring response: “you look like hell.” And, indeed, time away has taken a hellish tool, but not nearly as hellish as the grief and mourning stimulated by loss of his lifebonded love, Tylendel, to suicide which preceded his march off to Karse.
When he returns to his ancestral manor home with aunt and mentor, Savil, he is forced into yet another hell. Vanyel is what is known as shaych or what we call in our world homosexual. Both his father, Lord Withen and his mother, Lady Treesa, work desperately to convince him that he is mistaken about his sexuality and try to get him to go straight. One of the complications at work here is the big secret about the King’s daughter, Jisa. Because King Randale was not capable of fathering a child, Vanyel agreed to take over that role and perform his duty to the country. Now, in the wake of the death of his beloved and facing the living memory of that duty, Vanyel begins to wonder if the emotions he is feeling for the queen consort, Shavri, might not be heterosexual love.
Vanyel has been the object of a long obsession—let’s call it what it is, a psychopathic stalking campaign—by Lady Treesa’s maid, Melenna. During a brief period semi-lucidity about the impossibility of Vanyel ever becoming her lover, she turned her attention to his brother, Mekeal, which produced an illegitimate son named Medren. Vanyel takes a special liking to Medren because he reminds him of himself at that age, including being bullied by his father’s armsmaster, Jervis. Recognizing that Medren possesses the empathetic qualities of the Bardic Gift, he sponsors the boy for entry to the Bardic Collegium. Confronting Jervis about the supposed bullying, Vanyel is stunned to learn that his former torturer is wracked by guilt over his treatment which was demanded by Lord Withen in a misguided attempt to beat manhood into the sensitive boy.
The bulk of what passes for a plot in the novel enters at this stage with the introduction of Herald-Prince Tashir from the country of Lineas, where the use of magic is taboo and forbidden. Tashir has suffered a terrible childhood that includes an abusive father and an incest-minded mother who attempts to seduce her own son. It is eventually discovered that a curse in the form of magic spells hangs over the royal family perpetrated by Tashir’s own uncle. When the uncle attempts to perform the same magic against Vanyel, his response in defending himself winds up wiping out almost that entire side of the royal family, including Tashir’s uncle. Tashir, however, survives, and becomes the king of two different nations. He relinquishes the power to annex them to King Randale of Valdemar, however, in self-consideration of his own youthful inexperience and inability to effectively carry out his duties as monarch.
In the process of defending himself, Vanyel is mortally wounded and on the verge of death. Ready and eager to accept death so he can be reconciled with Tylendel, he is suddenly surprised by the appearance of strange shadowy figure who offers him the choice between dying and remaining among the living. The choice is not as easy and clear-cut as it seems, however. Death brings to him an end to all his suffering and loneliness, but at the cost of Valdemar no longer being the country he knows as it falls into darkness and death. On the other hand, choosing life brings misery and pain to him personally, but with the benefit that Valdemar’s misery will be more contained.
In an act of supreme self-sacrifice, Vanyel chooses to live.
