Elayne has lost all hope for her father's recovery as he battles leukemia, and it is with a feeling of defeat that Elayne sits down with him one night and cracks open the old volume entitled The Maid and the Unicorn. Elayne reads of the story of the magical weaver Francois Robochon, his daughter and her namesake Alice-Elayne, and the escape from Goloth, Land of the Fabulous Beast on the back of a unicorn. Even as Elayne scoffs at the fantastical story, her father insists on its authenticity and presents a supposed unicorn horn passed down from Elayne's ancestor to her as a gift. It isn't until Elayne comes face to face with tapestries depicting the great unicorn and woven with the initials AE that she finally realizes the truth, although the realization does come just a bit too late. Plunging head-first into the Land of the Fabulous Beast, Elayne seeks to discover a cure for her father and possibly save Goloth from its tyrannical ruler, the descendant of the weaver Robochon's murderer, King-Elect Leo.