Undergraduate Sam Wood finds his dream life in Oxford interrupted when he encounters a menacing Shadow.Soon he is on the run, pursued by unknown forces and searching for answers. He escapes to the borderlands of Northumberland, where beings from other worlds are creeping into this one, and learns he is embroiled in a quest to prevent the murder of the last Druid, heir of a mysterious order which has protected this world and others for millennia. Along the way, the boundaries between good and evil, light and dark, and even the loyalties of those sent to protect him are called into question. What awaits him at the Dead Water only he can face. A place where the Druids laid down their lives to protect the darkest of all their secrets.