Apprentice healer Lassair isn't too alarmed when a travelling peddler relates a grisly tale of a red-bearded giant breaking into a woman's home and caving in her skull like an eggshell; peddlers, she has observed, tend towards the dramatic. But her attitude changes when she learns that the dead woman is a distant relation. The incident makes Lassair's family uneasy, for the intruder seemed to be searching for something. What could it be? Lassair has...

"October, 1093. Two young men have been brutally beaten to death; a third viciously attacked. All three men are of similar appearance. But could there be another connection? Lassair meanwhile has agreed to accompany her former lover Rollo on a perilous journey north in search of King William. On their trail is a skilled, relentless and ruthless assassin. Who is he -- and why has he targeted Rollo? If they are to survive, the hunted must become the...

Called out to attend a body found on a lonely stretch of river bank, its throat torn out, apprentice healer Lassair is skeptical of the sheriff's verdict that this was the result of a wild animal attack. But when a second body is discovered, similarly mutilated, rumors engulf the town that the legendary demon known as the Night Wanderer has returned to wreak havoc.

In Autumn of 1093, Lassair encounters a veiled noblewoman on the quay at Cambridge, set on by an angry mob. She has no idea that the woman, alone but for her infant child, brings both mystery and peril. Then a devastating flood hits the fens, and among the wreckage washed up Aelf Fen is a body. Lassair, in the company of a sheriff's officer, wonders if she is dealing with murder. Meanwhile, in the south, Lassair's beloved Rollo is moving with relief...