Once again a helpless prisoner of the sadistic Lord Fulgrim, Lady Corinna finds herself a naked pawn in his deadly plan to wrest control of Illeum from her father. Fulgrim's hatred for her is such that, regardless of her rank, she is slowly and cruelly being forced into submission as one of the human pony girls so popular among the wealthy merchants and nobles of the eastern lands, and even if her father should eventually yield to Fulgrim's demands, her fate already seems sealed. Only her beloved steward-master-lover, Lord Savatch, still recovering from a near fatal wound, fully realises the danger she is in and he, together with his former lover, the Yslandic warrior princess Alanna and her deadly young female cohort Jekka, must try to reach Corinna before Fulgrim's power becomes all encompassing.