Synopsis Fourteenth century Yorkshire provides a wild and windswept backdrop for the second adventure in the Oric Trilogy. Many places depicted in the book exist to this day, though in a rather more ruinous state than their heyday. All names have been changed for the sake of poetic licence. Hilarity, heartbreak, skulduggery, romance, and battles for supremacy are encapsulated in the story as sixteen-year-old orphan boy, Oric, seeks to unravel the mystery locked away by an inherited key. Essica Figg, moneylender and villain, learns of Oric’s inheritance. He determines to steal the key, believing it will unlock a door to great wealth. His subsequent meddling in affairs he fails to comprehend, produces a terrifying result. Unsavoury soothsayer, Mother Olive, prophesies that a plague of demons will strike the districts of Kilterton and Bayersby on Summer Solstice Eve. Only those folks who run for the hills will survive the onslaught. In dealing with the subsequent panic, Oric and Ichtheus suspect a trouble-making faction may have paid the old woman, to spread rumours of death and destruction. But which one, and to what end? A deadly epidemic breaks out in a neighbouring district, adding to Oric’s already frantic workload. He journeys to Lockton Castle to investigate the cause and severity of the problem. Upon his arrival, he unearths far more than he bargains for. Fearing for his life, Oric escapes in the dead of night. Riding hell-for-leather, he returns to Bayersby Manor with a spine-chilling tale to tell. Oric, Ichtheus, and Dian band together to protect everything they hold most dear. The trio is helped, but more often hindered, by the good folk of Kilterton and Bayersby, a donkey named Braccus, and Parzifal, an irritating, but loveable, wolfhound.