In the finale to the Dormia trilogy, the dreaded nursery rhyme comes to life at last as a dark Shadow Tree threatens to cause the world's end. But who will stop it? Alfonso is now an ageling, Resuza and Hill are slaves, Bilblox appears to be a traitor, and Leif is shipwrecked on the edge of a forbidding forest. An ancient prophecy states that the Tree can be destroyed, but the price must be paid in blood, and whoever tries faces certain death. Nonetheless, a hero must journey northward, across the great polar expanse, to Dargora, the mythical city built of ice and human bones. All hope rests on a hooded girl making a dangerous trek with a newborn baby, the only one who can change the course of fate.