After having rescued his eldest brother Dirk during a perilous voyage beyond the Golden Door, humble-but-heroic Rye returns to Weld with Dirk and his friends Sonia and Faene. Although the tyrant Olt has been overthrown, he was not the source of the marauding, dragon-like skimmers—and thus the threat to Weld remains. Rye has a strong feeling that his middle brother Sholto has chosen the Silver Door, and that this is where the skimmers really come from. As his visions of Dirk turned out to be true, he believes his visions of Sholto and the skimmers’ origins are true also. The Silver Door will lead Rye, Sonia and Dirk to bare, desolate places—the Saltings, the Scour—and strange, often desperate people locked in a struggle for survival. It will provide answers to some mysteries, while also giving them new ones to think about. And it will lead them into terrible danger, as the wider ramifications of Olt’s downfall become clear and an even more dangerous enemy rises to challenge them.