Into the icy maze of the city of Neverness a wild boy stumbles spear in hand starving frostbitten and grieving. Danlo the Wild raised by far-off Alaloi neanderthal cave-dwellers survived a plague that took all of his tribe. Now he must find who engineered the disease and how he can cure it. And what kind of man he will grow up into as he enters the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame. His journey has only begun.