Maia is a fifteen-year-old peasant beauty growing up in poverty beside Lake Serrelind. Seduced by her stepfather and betrayed by her jealous mother, Maia finds herself in the hands of slave-traders to be sold as a concubine.

She attracts the attention of General Kembri who uses her to obtain information from her admirers. Her adventures uncover a plot for civil war. Proclaimed as a heroine, Maia finds that one sinister result of fame is to have enemies in high places.

Maia has to struggle for survival through treachery, cruelty, lost love, and a final flight through a wild empire to escape a crumbling regime.