Sometimes life forces you to make a decision that will change the future forever It is true that you choose your own path in life You shape your own destiny But sometimes fate chooses for you Legend speaks of a girl on horseback who will save the world Her light and wisdom will dispel the darkness and chaos She will put everything right Are you the one
Prologue Once upon a time in the Cold Sea lay a lifeless isle where darkness reigned One day a star fell from the sky and out of its strong flaming glow came a girl on horseback As she rode slowly across the sea her horse’s hooves tamed the wild waves beneath her In her right hand she held the light of life in her left a golden harp The music of the harp awoke the surrounding nature She lay the light down on the island and life and hope poured out of the cold nothingness Warmth and brightness spread over everything that had been dead Everything was new But the girl’s spirit could not endure She dissolved into nature into the winds the rain the teardrops of the dew Some claim she remains there to this day Listen and you might hear her in the wondrously clear song of the birds or feel her in the soft caress of the breeze on a warm summer’s day As the island called Jorvik came into being good and evil entered the world Light cannot exist without darkness as darkness cannot exist without light The struggle between good and evil has been secretly raging for thousands of years A great darkness hides in the depths of the ocean biding its time waiting just a little while longer Jorvik located somewhere between Norway Iceland and the British Isles of which it was once part is a nexus of worlds
Horse people come to experience the island’s equestrian culture and abundance of horse breeds and nature lovers seek it out to admire Jorvik’s natural beauty However it’s also sought out by companies that want to ruthlessly exploit its precious natural resources A small number of these visitors hold Jorvik’s fate in their hands but most do not Many who have been to Jorvik before seem to have forgotten that the island exists the same way a dream fades into nothing when you wake up in the morning If you hear about Jorvik the name will soon escape you again It’s as though the island is a myth That island again Somewhere in Scandinavia right Iceland Dark days await beautiful Jorvik Evil is poised to be unleashed Should that come to pass everything will be lost Yet while the raging sea seethes and hisses hope lives for it is taking root in the secret order of druids who are dedicated to standing against this doomsday scenario The foremost champions of these druids are called the Soul Riders The Soul Riders are chosen girls who share a special bond with their horses Through that bond they acquire special powers to help them in their fight against evil It has been many years since the Soul Riders defended Jorvik but there are rumors that the time has come for a new sisterhood to form
1 Are we there yet Lisa was fifteen years old but she felt like a squirmy impatient five-year-old as she asked the same question for the tenth time since they’d gotten in the van How long had they been waiting ten minutes Her dad just smiled and lightly drummed his fingers against the steering wheel They should be letting us off the ferry any minute now Isa he replied They already started unloading It feels like we’ve been sitting here for hours Lisa muttered She couldn’t help but flinch at the sound of her old nickname It made her think of a determined little girl with disheveled red hair Plump cheeks and a T-shirt with a horse motif Always horses Always on her way somewhere following her mom or dad or the mild-mannered family cat who used to sleep curled up in a ball by her feet Isa is the photo album version of Lisa Peterson she thought to herself The past History She doesn’t have much in common with the here-and-now Lisa who was sitting in the passenger seat of an old van waiting for her new life to start Again
