<p><em>... there is nothing more powerful than the courage of a fearful heart ...</em><span> </span></p><p><br></p><p><span>Fourteen-year-old Gil Lake, haunted by his father''s death in a kayaking accident, is at the river with his best-friend Danni and her brother, Percy, when a strange bird drops a hollow stone at Percy''s feet. When Gil sees a beautiful green-eyed girl through the stone, Danni throws it into a whirlpool. Percy jumps after it; she leaps to rescue him. Fear holds Gil back a fateful moment before he follows. Drawn ferociously down, he emerges into a winter night. Danni approaches, dressed strangely and carrying a flaming torch. She has been here for months. The whirlpool''s "Underwater Bridge" bends time as a prism bends light: they are in ninth-century Britain, in the Norse stronghold of Orkney, after the fall of Camelot ...</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style