Apprentice healer Lassair isn't too alarmed when a travelling peddler relates a grizzly 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. Obstreperous, elderly Utta will not be much missed, but the incident makes Lassair's family uneasy. For the intruder seemed to...

October, 1093. At her mentor's urgent request, Lassair is accompanying Gurdyman across the sea to Spain. But why is he insistent on embarking on this difficult and dangerous journey just as winter approaches? And why does he seem so afraid? As the pair reach the remote mountainous regions of northern Spain, Lassair will be tested as never before.

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