Almost a decade has passed since Vanyel was knocking at death’s door and offered a choice by a strange shadowy figure: death and contentment for himself in the face of untold misery for the people of his country or a life of loneliness and pain himself with the opportunity to reduce if not prevent the suffering of so much of the populace of Valdemar. What’s a heroic figure to do?
King Randale is now the one facing death knocking ever more loudly at his door. Barely mobile physically and even more incapacitated mentally, Randale is a figurehead only. The power behind the throne—hardly a secret—is Vanyel and he is soon to be faced with the greatest threat the people have ever had to endure: a serial killer of Herald-Mages. In an effort to defend the realm, Vanyel has created a barrier covering the entire kingdom that serves to inhibit mages hostile to Valemar from using black magic against them.
Vanyel has been a celibate homosexual since the suicide of the one great love of his life. A bard-in-training named Stefan is discovered to have been endowed with an unusual gift: the ability to use music to actually block the sensation of pain. Knowing the king suffers terribly, Vanyel sends for Stefan to offer public proof of this power and soon thereafter learns that the handsome young man is a shaych like himself and, furthermore, has fallen deeply in love with Vanyel. The self-willed celibacy adopted by Vanyel is only partially due to grief and longing for his lost lover. He is also terribly afraid that if he should get too close to anyone, they will suffer for it and so he is hesitant to return Stefan’s feelings despite acknowledgement to himself that does feel them. The lifebond that Vanyel had developed with his long dead love had already broken apart one conventional wisdom: that it could take place between same sex partners. And now Vanyel finds he is breaking another conventionally accepted rule of the ritualistic psychic linking of soulmates: one person experiencing it twice. But sure enough, Vanyel and Stefan become lifebonded, against all odds and history.
Following this discovery, a series of incidents take place affecting Stefan, Vanyel and his family members. He is able to save his mother from the lethal toss of a dagger at the last second. When Stefan is playing his music for a group of women, they are attacked by the very same mage who earlier had tried and failed to kill Vanyel. It is then learned that Stefan might be the reincarnation of Vanyel’s first lifebonded lover, Tylendel, but it is decided that the discretion is the better part of relationship-building and so Vanyel is not informed of this possibility.
Meanwhile, King Randle is inching closer to death and the long-time nemesis of Valdemar to the north—the nation of of Karse—is ready to declare war. This stimulates Vanyel to head south to the neighboring country of Rethwellen, notorious for their hatred of homosexuality, to nevertheless negotiate a treaty. It is after his return that Vanyel actually learns of the serial killings of Herald-Mages which have been made to look like merely unfortunate accidents. Almost as soon as he and Stefan set out to track down the mastermind behind this conspiracy, they are attacked by bandits who admit to being in the employ of a mage they refer to as Master Dark. Though pained to do so, Stefan gives in to the agreement previously made if such circumstances should arise: he runs to freedom, leaving Vanyel behind. A spell on has is placed upon Vanyel which presents him from using his powers and left to their own devices, most of bandits ignore the potential consequences awaiting them should the Dark Master not be happy with their actions. Led like mindless lemmings by the one who speaks the loudest, they proceed to gang rape Vanyel secure in the knowledge that in his present state he can see them and hear them, but can’t do anything to stop them. This turns out to be the biggest mistake made in what will prove to be their very short lives.
Having brutally beaten him almost to death, the bandits send for a healer in order to revive him so that when Master Dark arrives he can carry out his even more grotesque plans. But when the healer arrives, he is able to see the magical block which Master Dark has placed upon the pathetic victim of unspeakable violence. He secretly removes the block and eventually Vanyel is revived as the bandits hoped. But not as they wanted.
Stef arrives just in time to see an explosive demonstration of mage-power as a building is incinerated before his eyes, leaving nothing but ground and part of a door where the building used to be. The ground is littered with bodies on fire. In the distance, is the white-robed Vanyel casting the glare of his eyes which no longer contains even a glimmer of humanity onto a group of men crouched in terror, begging for mercy. Vanyel asks where this mercy was when they brutalizing him and sets about the task of creating a slow, painful death for each of them. He is midway through an enforce self-disembowelment of one man when Stef finally begs him to stop and consider his own humanity, daring to suggest that if he continues in his vengeance he will be no better than they were.
When Vanyel is finally freed from the ravages of his insanity, he sets off to locate this Master Dark who turns out to be almost his identical twin except everything is reversed: black hair and eyes instead of silver and dressed exactly alike except in black instead of white. Master Dark is the notorious evil mage named Leareth. Having defeated Leareth’s army and brought the battle down to one man against another, he calls upon the spell known as Final Strike which brings the assurance of death to one’s enemy, but at the cost of death of to himself as well.
Months later, Stefan returns to where Vanyel called upon magic to take his own life and save the country from Leareth with the intention of following in the footsteps of both Tylendel and Vanyel. He is there to take his own life. Just before he can do that, however, Vanyel appears in spirit form to call upon Stefan to do all in his power to convince the people of Valdemar that the magic of Herald-Mages are no longer require as protection against danger and that Heralds alone, without the attendant Mage-power, is alone enough to do this. Stefan agrees to commit the rest of his life to this seemingly impossible task in the knowledge that when he is done, he will join Vanyel again in the afterlife.
