Ilaya has a perfect memory. She is the daughter of a priestess of the Golden Eye clan of the Niangua tribe. While out gathering medicinal herbs, her village is attacked by a horde the club-brute apes and she is forced to flee. She finds a wolf-pup in the wilderness whom she adopts, then a young boy of her clan. She and her companions join up with survivors of a clan of Old Ones displaced from their cave be the club-brute apes. From the clan mother she is taught the secret instructions of the contemplation practice, which her younger race received the basic instructions for from the Old Ones numerous generations ago. After wintering with the Old Ones of the Long Tooth clan, Ilaya and her companions attempt to travel south seeking survivors of their Golden Eye clan, but they are captured by hunters of their new race, of the White Tusk clan of the Mammoth tribe. Many adventures befall Ilaya before she is informed that she is the child of the ancient prophecy, and this sets her upon her life's mission fraught with peril.