Children Of The Shaman

Description for CHILDREN OF THE SHAMAN by Jessica Rydill:

Thirteen-year-old Annat and her older brother, Malchik, are leaving their sheltered upbringing to be reunited with their estranged father, a shaman of considerable power, and to travel to the frozen north--a journey made perilous by bandits and savage Soul Men.

It is the time of the Thaw. The five-hundred-year Great Cold has ended. The Railway People are building a tunnel under the vast northern Forest of Aldemar to the unexplored reaches beyond. But a series of unexplained deaths threatens the project.

Annat and Malchik are Wanderers, a dispossessed people hated and feared by the native population. Their father is a healer on his way to Gard Aldemar, a place of superstition and blood feuds. His investigation into the dark forces behind the railway deaths will draw him and his children to the magical land of La Souterraine--a world where only those with magic can survive....