Three young squires: a prince, a baron’s son and a commoner, rescue monsters and battle fair maidens as they travel to their final testing place.
Morague, the Prince of Hallstatten, Adamant, the Baron Breathnach’s son, and Quinn, the son of a mercenary, are travelling together to the Convent of the Middle Sun. Here, they will deliver a magical book and undergo their final spiritual tests before becoming knights.
The squires get their horses and gear stolen and have to use their wiles and might to regain these. They are told, by a seer that “Only two will win through”. Adamant then leaves his friends to go off and rescue the sister of a maiden whom they find alone in a wood. This maid turns out to be a hamadryad who possesses Adamant and returns to murder Morague, who had warned Adamant not to go. Quinn, who has knowledge of worts and magic, manages to defeat the hamadryad’s possession of Adamant.
After other adventures, Morague, who has been cursed with blindness and old age, and Adamant, who has been cursed with infancy, by the old book, have to help Quinn who is being dragged to his doom by a demon, parading as a monk, in an old, deserted priory. The squires manage, eventually, to reach the convent of The Sisters of the Middle Sun for their final knights’ tests which turn out to be every bit as bad as they feared