The Quarry - A.M. Linden

Set in early medieval Britain and perfect for Lord of the Rings fans, this fourth instalment of The Druid Chronicles tells the story of a Saxon sheriff who''s on the hunt for fugitive Druids - unaware that he is being pursued as well. Obedient to the dictates of their chief priestess, a small band of goddess-worshipping Britons leave the shelter offered them by a loyal innkeeper for a desolate mountain valley believed to be the site of their cult''s ancestral home. Rebuilding stone walls reduced to rubble over centuries of abandonment would have taken years for a legion of skilled masons; the five Druid priests and priestesses have only one skilled labourer with them and only a matter of months before winter sets in. Time is equally pressing for a pair of Christian Saxon lovers, neither of whom is motivated by any higher cause than their compelling need to finish what they''ve travelled from the capital city of Atheldom to the remote shire of Codswallow to do: kill the woman''s husband before he finds out that she is pregnant. Although the two situations are unrelated by anything other than their proximity to one another, the moment when Caelym, high priest of the shrine of the Great Mother Goddess, will be caught in the crossfire between Stefan, sheriff of Codswallow, and the forces his estranged wife has gathered against him, is rapidly approaching.