The missing and the dead:

Fiona: mortally wounded by Storm of House Minobee as she defended Amber from the incoming hordes.

Random: captured and beheaded in front of the Chaos troops at the fall of Amber.

Benedict: last seen holding the stairs at the top of Mount Kolvir.

Corwin: called to the war by his siblings, he never arrived.

Bleys: at the fall of the King, took his remaining troops and fled into shadow.

Llewella: rules in Rebma with the consent of Chaos.

A hundred years after the patternfall war and Storm of House Minobee sits upon the Throne of Amber. For ten years, Flora, Gerard, Bleys, Caine and Julian have hidden from the forces of Chaos. In Allorah, a small, well defended shadow, they wait, dreading the day when the pattern will be destroyed and Chaos will reign again.

Yet the pattern still exists.

What plans have Chaos for the centre of all order in the Universe? Why does the pattern still stand?

Why now, ten years on, have they started killing Amber's children? What has driven them to seek in shadow the blood of the Chaosian traitor, Dworkin?

Too late did the elders realise that their children were dying. Too many had already gone; now only five still lived.

It was Caine; bitter, grieving, who left the safety of Allorah to hunt for the remaining children.

He may still be too late.