After learning that she is the Princess, Jenna is whisked from her home and carried toward safety by the Extraordinary Wizard, those she always believed were her father and brother, and a young guard known only as Boy 412--pursued by agents of those who killed her mother ten years earlier.

When Princess Jenna is pursued by a dark wizard, it is the apprentice, Septimus Heap, who must save her while enduring such terrors as a night in the Forest with hungry wolverines and carnivorous trees.

Septimus must elude the plans of Merrin Meredith and Tertius Fume in order to find the House of Foryx, a place where all Time meets, and secure the release of Nicko and Snorri.