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The Hooded One. The one to breathe the dark and light and dusk between....

When an old druid foresees this harbinger of chaos, he also glimpses its future. A peasant from Loxley will wear the Hood and, with his sister, command a last, desperate bastion of Old Religion against New. Yet a devout nobleman's son could well be their destruction-Gamelyn Boundys, whom Rob and Marion have befriended. Such acquaintance challenges both duty and destiny. The old druid warns that Rob and Gamelyn will be cast as sworn enemies, locked in timeless and symbolic struggle for the greenwode's Maiden.

Instead, a defiant Rob dares his Horned God to reinterpret the ancient rites, allow Rob to take Gamelyn as lover instead of rival. But in the eyes of Gamelyn's Church, sodomy is unthinkable... and the old pagan magics are an evil that must be vanquished.

The King of the Shire Wode. That is what they will call you...

Home razed by Church edict, loved ones struck down by treachery, Rob is left for dead. Taken by the old druid master into the deeps, Rob survives to emerge as driven leader of a band of tight-knit outcasts, claiming the forest as their own and wielding the Horned Lord's vengeance with silent, deadly arrows. Gamelyn has fled England, only to return after finding new identity and purpose--but no absolution--on Crusade. When the two boyhood lovers next cross paths, it will be in a brutal, blindfolded game of foxes and hounds, one which pits Templar assassin against Heathen outlaw. When Rob discovers Marion is also still alive, the game turns.

History will chronicle Robyn Hood and Guy de Gisbourne as the deadliest of enemies, but the reality is complicated--and infinitely more tragic.

Beneath winter's chill awaits the deepest of magics...

Robyn Hood is the undisputed ruler of the wild, green Wode. Reunited with his sister Marion and his lover Gamelyn, Robyn and his band of outlaws seek to raise the Ceugant?the magical trine of the Old Religion?against the tyranny of Church and Crown. Yet their forest kingdom is roiling with conflict. Marion has been made welcome, but old shackles and new fears hamper her true promise. Gamelyn is torn between oaths of heart and head?and the outlaws never let him forget he was but recently Guy of Gisbourne, defrocked Templar and Robyn's fiercest enemy.

When a lone traveler is waylaid on the road, a common occurrence quickly proves uncommon. Knight and Maiden, Archer and Men, all are conscripted to aid a Queen's?and ultimately a King's?ransom. For beneath winter's chill is awakening the deepest of magics, and there are those who seek the power of Robyn Hood and his Shire Wode for their own ends.

The Summer King has come to the Wode...

Yet to which oath, head or heart, shall he hold?

Once known as the Templar assassin Guy de Gisbourne, dispossessed noble Gamelyn Boundys has come to Sherwood Forest with conflicting oaths. One is of duty: demanding he tame the forest's druidic secrets and bring them back to his Templar Masters. The other is of heat and heart: given to the outlaw Robyn Hood, avatar of the Horned Lord, and the Maiden Marion, embodiment of the Lady Huntress. The three of them--Summerlord, Winter King, and Maiden of the Spring--are bound by yet another promise, that of fate: to wield the covenant of the Shire Wode and the power of the Ceugant, the magical trine of all worlds. In this last, also, is Gamelyn conflicted; specters of sacrifice and death haunt him.

Uneasy oaths begin a collision course when not only Gamelyn but Robyn and Marion are summoned to the siege of Nottingham by the Queen. Her promise is that Gamelyn will regain his noble family's honor of Tickhill, and the outlaws of the Shire Wode will have a royal pardon.

But King Richard has returned to England, and the price of his mercy might well be more than any of them can afford....