The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets and stars faced destruction. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.