Mercenary Gar owes his life to the legendary archmage Kuon, who rescued him when he was a child. Years later, Gar serves in an order tasked with hunting dangerous mages and survives another disastrous encounter only because Kuon appears once again. Instead of continuing as a soldier who fears sorcery from the outside, Gar becomes the archmage’s apprentice and must learn the very form of power his former comrades were trained to oppose.