Jani, the strange and lovely heroine, has been brought up in a remote region of the Himalayas in Tibet by a runaway English soldier. Both Jani's past and that of her soldier protector are shrouded in a mystery that grows ever deeper for Jani when the foreign demon on a black horse comes from the south to take her away to a new and frightening world - a London orphanage.

Later, when she moves on and finds the Woman in Red, Jani becomes one of the family in a Hampshire household. And it is here that her past is gradually uncovered. She becomes locked in a macabre struggle, long prophesied by the High Lama of her Tibetan youth, against the strange and terrifying powers of the Silver Man.

Madeleine Brent's story of love and loyalty, of mystery and danger, moves on to a startling climax back amid the Himalayas where it all began as Jani's secret is unravelled.