The Oath

When the last remaining members of a hidden Druid community can no longer stay in their concealed refuge, they send Caelym, the youngest of their priests still living, on a mission. He must find Annwr, the younger sister of their high priestess, who was seized by a Saxon raiding party fifteen years earlier. Caelym speaks little English and has only the unclear words of an oracle to guide him, yet he eventually tracks Annwr to a hut on the grounds of a Christian convent.

Annwr has spent her years in captivity looking after Aleswina, a Saxon princess left orphaned and placed inside the convent walls by her cousin, King Gilberth, after he took the throne that had been her father's. Aleswina is a frightened, retiring young woman who has never known life beyond the convent.

Just as Caelym and Annwr are preparing to leave together, Aleswina learns that Gilberth, a ruler notorious for brutality and a volatile temper, intends to remove her from the convent and marry her. In fear, she flees with the two Druids, and the journey that follows takes a course none of the three could have predicted.