Sixteen-year-old orphan Trevelyan has become one of the deadliest warriors to walk the lands of the Northern Kingdom. Yet his heart and mind remain lost in the confusion of his painful past. When Trevelyan finally learns the truth about his parents' death in an ambush commanded by the slave-trading Order of the Red Robes, he swears vengeance and vows to complete his family's mission to obliterate the bonds of slavery.

With his highwayman-turned-hero companion Tergli-a three-foot-tall frogman with wicked rapier skills and a fondness for finely tailored vests-Trevelyan travels to Kharlin, a city of scholars and great libraries, in search of others who had known his parents. Along the way, the pair comes to the aid of an elf, a dwarf, and hundreds of slaves, leading to a showdown with the sinister overlord of the Red Robes and his evil cronies.

Trevelyan's journey takes him through the last vestiges of childhood and ushers him to maturity-and through an unimaginable web of events to obtain wisdom, exact revenge, and fulfill his fate.