S''''tai, an outcast from the nomadic Jurii tribe, stumbles across the body of an injured huntress. His instinct is to abandon her to the Baasei desert, but she tells him the story of the ambush of her hunting patrol, by mysterious men with weapons that breathed fire. Burdened by his circumstantial responsibility for her, he decides to accompany the huntress, whose name he does not even know, in a quest to find her kidnapped life mate- a hunter named Idrae.