Kullyn Kenn is on a quest. His mission for the Skyward: to find the legendary Jink, a shadowy elfin-seeming woman who, forty years earlier, prevented war between the humans of Abode and the alien Neverending.
Kullyn's search takes him first to Commander Bellambara, who had a run-in with Jink years earlier. She was ordered never to reveal what she learned that night - that elves still exist on Abode and that Jink is one.
Meanwhile, Jerrod Anaken, one of the elite Black Snake jack-ups, has taken his obsession with Jink to a very dangerous place - a forbidden zone of dark power - the mysteriously resurrected Blue Mountain.
Using as bait an ancient elfin artifact - a strange key whose purpose no one has ever discovered - Kullyn finally manages to meet Jink, only to find out that whatever she once knew about how she averted the war, she has long since wiped from her memory...