After centuries of fighting wizards, dedicated scientists have found the answer to winning the war: turn magic into science. Reduce it to its final empirical base, to be read and studied. But to gather such information, the Special Office decides a transmitter must be implanted in a legendary unicorn, the prize talisman of the most powerful magician. Then it can spy upon the highest councils of sorcery and the daily transmissions analyzed. Wearing this electronic eye, Aden enters the Holy City and carries out the mission. But it leaves him vulnerable to the wonders of enchantment, and he wanders the middle ground between two warring forces. Eventually he realizes the eye must be retrieved or the unicorn destroyed before science learns the innermost secrets of divine creation. As scientific rationality picks up momentum and the enchantment of the enemy crumbles away before it, Aden -- and those out to stop him -- races to find the unicorn.