Solomon Star, one-time personal bodyguard of the Amric Empress, is ordered to the primordial jungle-world known as Kall. Guided by a mysterious native woman known only as "the Savage", Solomon seeks a man who holds the planet's fate in his hands - his father. Drawn relentlessly toward an encounter with the Heart of Light at Kall's core, Solomon also journeys backwards into the darkness of his own past... a killing dark that follows him even now in the form of a twice-living madman, Lazarus, puppet-instrumentof Janis IV, ruler of the galaxy, who could neither govern nor love the one man closest to her heart...