Cymbril feels like a bird in a cage. Her task is to sing, to draw crowds to the markets offered by Master Rombol, lord of the Thunder Rake, the only home Cymbril has known. The Rake is a city on wheels, a vast wagon that rolls over the land, its interior a labyrinth of stairways, corridors, chambers, and secret doors.

When Cymbril befriends a fellow slave, a boy named Loric, one of the mysterious Fey, she dreams of a life beyond the Rake, and the two begin to plan their escape. But dangers haunt the shadows-the ominous Eye women, the perilous Night Market, the terrors of the Groag Swamp, and something that stalks the night's dark byways, hunting . . .

Survival will depend upon courage, loyalty, and perhaps upon a gift from Cymbril's long-departed parents-the glowing and magical fragment of a star.