The Shadowed Path Trilogy

The first book of this trilogy will be published in Fall 2008.

At the heart of The Shadowed Path is this dilemma:  If evil thrives on violence, how can force overcome it?

The main characters in this story are humans, although readers of Queen of the Orcs will find parts of its setting familiar.  The action takes place two centuries after that of the orc trilogy in a world that is imperiled by a cult that believes hate bestows strength and the strong deserve all they can take.

 

There are two principle characters.  Honus is a deadly man who has been raised from infancy to serve the goddess, Karm.  He is a Sarf, a master of the martial disciplines.  An expression of rage has been tattooed on his face and his fate has been needled on his back in letters he cannot read.  Honus has been servant to a holy man all his life, but that man has been slain.  Before he died, Honus’s master warned him never to bear his own pack.  Thus circumstances force Honus to purchase a slave for the task.

 

That slave is a young woman named Yim.  In consequence to a childhood vision, she embarked on a quest that was interrupted by her enslavement.  Yim is far more than she seems—a woman with supernatural powers who strives to keep them hidden.  

 

Yim and Honus’s relationship is complicated from the onset and grows more so throughout the trilogy.  They are two lonely people facing a hostile and terrifying world.  They need one another, but what drives them together also drives them apart.  The divine will acts as a third party in their lives, and both Yim and Honus respond to it with a mixture of devotion and resentment.

 

Through the course of the story, Yim will evade Honus, use him, love him, forsake him, and ultimately save him.  Honus’s fate binds him to Yim.  He comes to love her, but more urgently, he needs her to heal his soul.  Even after he feels that Yim has betrayed him, his need will drive him to join her in confronting the evil that threatens to engulf all humanity.