In the high summer heat, Joia watches the Midsummer ceremony that signals the start of a new year, enthralled. She dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world.
It is a vision of a great circle, assembled by the divided tribes of the Great Plain. Helped by Seft, a talented miner, it will become their life's work. But as drought ravages the earth, mistrust grows between the herders, farmers and woodlanders.