Osian and Tiroc Og’s band of renegades continue their dangerous quest to Fire Mountain in search of Osian’s missing kin. All the while they are being hunted by the Morok for Osian’s strange acquisition: the Shining Stone, a thing of power with links far back in history to long before the Ice Time.

Meanwhile, Osian has fallen for Gimin, a beautiful warrior of the Fox-Wolf tribe. But she, like so many others and so much else on this journey, may not be what she seems.

Facing betrayal from within, attacks by giant killer wolves, an impossible terrain and an overwhelming enemy, the obstacles the renegades face seem insurmountable.

To carry out their mission, they must rely more than ever on the curious powers of the Shining Stone, at the risk of losing not just their lives – but their souls.

DR BRENDAN QUAYLE is an award-winning environmental writer and film maker. He is the author (with David Bellamy) of the best-selling England's Last Wilderness and the seminal, now prophetic, environmental primer Turning the Tide.

Scots Irish of Manx ancestry, he lives with his family at the edge of a wild wood in the North of England.

Trained originally as an anthropologist, he studied amongst shamans and real-life sorcerers in the mountain tribes of the High Himalaya. His extraordinary experiences there, together with his lifelong interest in the myth and folklore of his Celtic ancestors, provide the inspiration and much of the source material for The Shining Stone.

Find out more at www.brendanquayle.com.