Tales of the Five #3:
The Librarian
On the road. On the loose. On a mission to unknown lands…
all by himself with the good friend who killed him.
It is five years since Freelorn Ferrant’s son ran the gauntlet of deadly treachery, war and destruction to be initiated in Lionhall, take back the White Stave, and become the fifty-first ruler of Arlen. His realm is slowly settling back into something resembling normalcy… though the new “normal” is nothing like the old one. For one thing, no previous king has ever been married to a warrior-sorceress, a fire elemental, a Dragon, and a self-taught adept who’s also the first man in millennia to focus the blue Fire.
But the new normal is disrupted when the new young lord of the people once called Reavers comes to Lorn with an unsettling mystery that portends a threat to both their realms. To solve it Freelorn must leave behind his spouses, his children, and everything else he holds dear, to journey into the debatable lands south of the Highpeaks—territory never successfully explored by humans.
Far from Arlen, the source of his power as the demigodly White Lion’s embodiment and heir, Lorn must expose himself to the unknown perils of country haunted by a dangerous power with its own agenda. And his only company on the journey is the man who, at the battle of Bluepeak, once sent him to death’s Door—and may have reason to do so again.
Tales of the Five: The Librarian is a 90,000-word novel continuing the sequence begun with Tales of the Five: The Levin-Gad and Tales of the Five: The Landlady, and will be published in Q4 of 2024. Publication will be announced here, at Bluesky, and on the Middle Kingdoms and Ebooks Direct Twitter timelines.