Alissa doesn’t believe in magic. Her father’s stories about the Hold, a renowned fortress where individual Keepers learn magic from your enigmatic Masters, are just that’stories. But her mom insists Alissa offers inherited her father’s magical ability, so she must go to the Hold to learn. On her way, she crosses paths with Strell, a wandering musician in the plains. Though Alissa isn’t sure she can trust a plainsman, Strell provides something Alissa requirements ‘ one of her father’s outdated maps. Traveling together, they can reach the Keep prior to the snow units in. However they don’t know the Hold is nearly vacant. The Keeper Bailic offers sent the Experts on the fool’s errand and systematically wiped out the various other Keepers in his search for the First Truth, a publication of magic that may give him greatest power. And he thinks that Alissa and Strell contain the secret of the book’s concealing place.