The Dying Earth is the first of four books, combined into Tales of the Dying Earth, and consists of six stories set on an earth far in the future, close to the time when the sun will go out. Humans now live in a semi-feudal society where magic is common and all science is considered to be magic too.

Turjan of Miir

In this first story, Turjan is a magician who has tried to create human life, but he is missing the great pattern which will hold it together. His experiments with vats have proven to be largely unsuccessful.

At last he decides that he must journey to Embelyon, a mythical land, and find the great magician Pandelume. When he arrives, he is immediately attacked by a beautiful woman who tries to kill him. After defeating her, he is given a task to fulfil by Pandelume, in return for which he will be given tutelage.

While studying the great secrets of mathematics, an arcane magic, he learns that the beautiful woman is called T'sais, and that she is the creation of Pandelume, but through an error she is warped and can see only ugliness and horror in all things, which is why she tries to kill and destroy.

Turjan asks permission to make another from that form, and this one is sound of mind, and he calls her T'sain. T'sain and T'sais of course meet each other in the woods, and T'sain tries to convince T'sais that there is beauty and goodness, and perhaps it can be found on earth.

T'sain and Turjan return to earth to live together, and T'sais asks Pandelume to transport her there as well, to try to find beauty and love. Pandelume explains that it is beyond his power to fix T'sais' mind, and that only a god could do so.

Mazirian the Magician

Mazirian is a powerful magician, who seeks to complete his knowledge by stealing the remaining unknown magic from other magicians. To this end he has captured Turjan.

A strange and beautiful woman comes repeatedly to the edge of his garden until he is compelled to follow her. He follows her through a forest to a meadow, but loses her. He asks one of the little people, the riders of dragonflies, if he has seen her, and is directed back to the forest.

He encounters a demon, who he kills thoughtlessly, and finds her struggling with a troll. He destroys the troll as well, but she has fled underwater. She runs up the bank and around some vampire grass, hoping he will finally be stopped, but he uses his last spell to defeat it. Despairing, she runs into a copse of trees that whip and beat at them with their branches.

Mazirian is finally destroyed, and T'sain makes her way to his stronghold, freeing Turjan as she dies. He promises to revive her mind in a new body.

T'sais

The beautiful but warped T'sais has come to earth to find beauty and love, but her first hours on earth are not the best introduction. She is robbed, almost raped, witnesses a murder and is attacked by a demon.

Finally she finds shelter in a cottage with a man named Etarr. He covers his head with a hood and seems mysterious, yet friendly. He is kind to her and tries to help her in her search.

Etarr has been cursed, an evil but beautiful witch named Javanne has swapped his face with that of a demon, and he must confront her to get it back. The pair travel to a black mass, to try and get hold of the witch. There is a raid and in the confusion, they capture Javanne.

They force her to reveal the way to get Etar's face back, and she takes them to a God, who gives each of them justice. Javanne is given the demon's face, Etarr's is restored to him, and T'sais' mind is finally healed of it's flaw.

Liane the Wayfarer

Liane the Wayfarer comes upon a young woman named Lith, probably a witch, living in a meadow. He wants her, but she says that she will only be his if he performs a deed for her.

She shows him her tapestry, half of which has been torn away, and explains that the other half has been stolen by Chun the Unavoidable. Liane thinks that he will have no problems, having just found a magic ring that you can step into and disappear from view.

He journeys to find Chun's stronghold, meeting an old man who shows him the bodies of young men with no eyes, the victims of Chun. He makes it to the main hall and sees no sign of Chun. Snatching the other half of the tapestry off the wall, he discovers Chun hiding behind it, and runs. He ducks behind a wall and steps into the ring, pulling it up behind him to become completely invisible.

A voice in the dark reminds him that Chun is called 'the unavoidable'.

Later that night Lith hears a noise outside and Chun gives her two threads from her tapestry in return for sending Liane. She places them carefully with the rest, and it is made clear to us that it is a tapestry of her home, which she will return to when the tapestry is again whole.

Ulan Dhor

The Prince Kandive, a powerful magician, sends his nephew Ulan Dhor on a quest. Many years earlier, the King Rogol Domedonfors grew tired of his people fighting and sealed his power into a pair of crystal tablets, giving one to each of the religious factions. When they are reunited, then the power will be accessable.

When Ulan approaches the city he is confused by the first people he meets, who insist that he must be a raider, or perhaps for the greens, or perhaps both, because of the colour clothes he wears.

He rescues a woman from a demon the first night he arrives and she explains that there are only people who wear grey living in the city, and when they go to raid the other temple, they put on red. But he knows he has seen people in green.

The next day he watches as people in green walk by people in grey without seeing them, and vice versa, they are under a strange compulsion. With the help of the woman he steals the tablets from the temples and reads the message. They must go to a tower with a yellow dome.

The tower is the place where the brain of the dead king has waited all these years, and it begins to destroy the city when it realises that it's people have still not resolved their differences. Ulan runs it through with his sword and escapes with the woman, heading back to his home.

Guyal of Sfere

Guyal has always been cursed with too much curiosity. It has vexed his family and countrymen ever since he was a child, and so he sets out to find the mythical "curator", who tends the Museum of Man.

After a number of adventures he comes to the town of Saponid, where he is tricked into committing a felony, and must judge a contest of beauty as punishment. When he chooses Shierl, the most beautiful girl in the town, he learns that he and the girl must now go to the Museum of Man up the hill, never to be seen again.

Inside the museum they find that the curator has long been insane, but after they cure him he explains he is dying and they must take over the museum for him. He implies that there may be a solution to the problem of the dying earth somewhere in the museum.