The murder of Eleanor's brother leaves her the sole heir to the crown of Eswy, a pawn in the struggle for power between different religious and political alliances. With her father a prisoner, Eleanor flees her mother's schemes to marry her off to her cousin and finds herself hunted through the wilderness, facing treachery on all sides. Maurey, the hero of Nightwalker, and his friend, the Fen witch and warrior Korby, are summoned back from a mission overseas to find and protect the princess. Once a scullion and a fugitive, Maurey is now a young man of considerable status and power, a Nightwalker warlock in charge of his human brother's intelligence network. The mysterious symbol of the Yehillon seems to point to a conspiracy against both Dunmorra and the hidden Nightwalker kingdom of Talverdin, a conspiracy into which Eleanor has stumbled. While the two human kingdoms of the island are threatened with tyranny and Talverdin itself with annihilation, Maurey and Eleanor struggle to unravel the plots that threaten the princess's life and the peace of the three kingdoms.
K.V. Johansen was born in Kingston, Ontario, and is the author of numerous works for children, teens, and adults. She predominantly writes secondary-world fantasy, but is also the author of some science fiction and literary criticism, and of a collection retelling medieval Danish ballads. With an artist friend, she is also working on a manga-style adaptation of a short story set in the Blackdog world. Johansen has an M.A. from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. Her lifelong interest in ancient and medieval history and the history of languages has had a great influence on her writing and world-building. Johansen was the editor of Stalin Versus Me, the final, posthumously-published volume of Donald Jack's "Bandy Papers" series. She is hard at work on more Torrie books and on further works set in the world of Blackdog, a secondary world fantasy for adults coming out in September 2011.
She has a house full of exotic trees, most of which have gotten too big to pretend to be bonsai any more. Her websites can be found at www.pippin.ca & www.kvj.ca .
