In the ancient kingdom of Sarkhan in Southeast Asia the abdication of King Diad is at hand, just as the astrologers predicted seventy-one years before. His son, Prince Lin, scholar and neutralist, will ascend to the 2,500-year-old throne. The world watches with varying degrees of understanding what is at stake - the control of a whole subcontinent.

(Key Words: Southeast Asia, Fiction, King Diad, Communism).