The compelling and powerful first novel from World Fantasy Award winner Charles de Lint! He is the Songweaver, but before he was a master of song he was merely Cerin of Wran Cheaping--a seventeen-year-old orphan raised by a wildland witch. Then he encountered the Maid of the Grey Rose--the lone survivor of the war that devastated the Trembling Lands and the promised bride of Yarac Stone-Slayer, the feared and terrible Waster. The mysterious beauty captured Cerin's heart, drawing him into a world both dark and deadly, until armed with only a tinkerblade and the magic of song, he would take on a man's challenge . . . and choose a treacherous path toward a magnificent destiny. "Charles de Lint is one of the most gifted storytellers writing fantasy today."--Locus