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.