After three years in a barbarous orphanage, Nicholas is raised in near-isolation in a castle, where he is watched every moment, prevented from reading or seeing the outside world, and given "treatments" designed to retrieve some mysterious, forgotten bit of information from his brain.After three years in a barbarous orphanage, Nicholas is raised in near-isolation in a castle, where he is watched every moment, prevented from reading about, or seeing the outside world, and given "treatments" designed to retrieve some mysterious, forgotten bit of information from his brain.