Noble, brave, but almost childishly naive voivode Nikita, Prince Silver, returns from the Livonian War and horrified discovers that during his absence, Rus has become a helpless victim of the raging oprichniks, who have formed a new environment for the half-mad paranoid tsar.
Again and again, the vicious and malicious favorites of Ivan the Terrible try, willingly or unwillingly, to draw the honest prince into their intrigues – or to ruin him.
At the same time, the drama of his relationship with the beautiful Elena unfolds, who, while Nikita was fighting, was forced to marry another to escape the advances of a powerful rapist...