Such cataclysms had happened in the past, most recently to the qhal, a species that at one time had enslaved other races, including humans.

The Union Science Bureau had dispatched a hundred men and women on a one-way mission to destroy the Gates, closing them behind them as they traveled from one world to the next.

The creature had taken over the body of Chya Roh, Vanye's cousin, then fled through the Gate of Ivrel to the land of Shiuan.

Vanye finds the camp deeply divided: Fwar's barrowlanders resented by the more numerous marsh people, both groups hating and being despised in turn by the khal, nominally led by Hetharu, but themselves split into factions.

Knowing the situation to be unstable, Roh tries to leave quietly with Vanye and Fwar's band, but the khal are alerted and pursue.

It is a close race, but some of them reach the shelter of the forest, where the few barrowlanders not caught and killed by the khal are dispatched by Roh and Vanye.

At last, Morgaine forces them to recognize not just the immediate danger, but the ever-present temptation of the power of the Gates; they agree to close them after she and Vanye depart, even though they are their main defense against the horde.