The darklings come at night carrying their plague of shadows to the nine worlds. They corrupt all they touch and there's no cure except burning in the sacred fires. And Abagail Bauer has been infected with their baneful magic. When her father finds she has the shadow plague, he sends her across the Rainbow Bridge to her Aunt Mattelyn, the only person he knows who's ever beaten the plague. Abagail, joined with her neighbor, Rorick, and her psychic sister, Leona, sets forth to stop the plague before it kills her. But between them and her salvation towers a forest of mindless darklings. Will Abagail find her aunt before the plague destroys her? Or is she damned to become a beacon of dark magic, and destroy all she loves?