A troubled Celtic Otherworld with gateways into our own is the setting for the second volume in the Song of Albion series, following The Paradise War . After Meldryn Mawr, king of the Llwyddi, is treacherously slain, the bard and narrator, Tegid Tathal, names Llew, the king's champion and a sojourner from our world, as successor. The king's son Meldron contests the bard's ancient right to confer kingship and claims the throne himself. Tegid and Llew escape imprisonment only to witness the slaughter of the rest of Albion's bards; then Meldron blinds Tegid and cuts off Llew's hand, thereby denying him kingship for all time, since only an unblemished man can reign. Escaping again, Tegid and Llew wander in the wilderness, encountering a possible god, before they begin to build Dinas Dwr, a city of refuge for all those oppressed by Meldron, whose depredations are poisoning a beautiful land.