With skin as pale and eyes as black as death, a blood-red ruby depending from one nostril, he was Ser Noris, the most villainous wizard of all time. He had done it all-slain all adepts worth his scorn, attained immortality, become the dire tyrant of the Sorcerers Isles and a shadow of doom on the lands beyond. But it wasn't enough.... There was yet one opponent he had not humbled--She whom men called Maiden; She who was implicit in the alternation of death and birth, the cycling of the seasons, the complex circling of the moons. She who was the phoenix-the spirit of the earth itself? This is the novel of Serroi, brave warrior-woman of the meie, who knows she must overcome the ties set on her by Ser Noris, who raised her as his tool, or see her world crumble.