I’m now three chapters into the first book in a brand new fantasy series called Snaith and Moonshine: Sorcerers of the Weyd. Book 1 is provisionally titled The Codex of Her Scars.
Snaith and Moonshine begins on the Isle of Branikdür, a dismal backwater just beyond the reach of the mighty Helum Empire. Branikdür is populated with warring clans who are only prevented from wiping each other out by the guidance of sorcerers in service to the Weyd, an overarching god of many facets.
The protagonist is a young man, Herrick Snaith, who has recently come of age. Herrick is a man of unusual mental abilities who is determined to be the greatest warrior the clan has ever known. The local Weyd sorcerer, Theurig, however, has other ideas. When the Eisteddfod comes to his village of Malogoi, Herrick has two goals in mind: perform well before the High King in the fighting circles, and ask for the hand of his childhood sweetheart, Tey Moonshine in marriage.
But when disaster strikes in the form of a black bear, and both Herrick and Tey are brutally injured, Herrick discovers that Tey Moonshine isn’t the girl he’d thought her to be. And not only that, but the Malogoi Clan has no use for either of them now they are too disfigured to fight or plow. Herrick is left with no other choice than to try out for an apprenticeship with Theurig, so he can become an untouchable servant of the Weyd. If he fails the test of initiation, he’ll suffer the fate of all who are unable to fulfill their role in clan society: he’ll be dragged out to Coldman’s Copse and left as fodder for the fomoraig, a race of demons who once ruled the world.
Tey Moonshine, though, has already endured a lifetime of pain at the hands of her father, and she’s learned how to turn suffering to her advantage. When Theurig presents her with the same choice as Herrick, she couldn’t care less about the outcome of the test. She knows things even the Weyd sorcerers have not discovered, and she’s always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with death.
Even as Herrick and Tey are separated by events, their lives are inextricably woven together. While Herrick learns that magick is nothing at all like the clansfolk have been led to believe, Tey discovers it is even further from the legerdemain taught by the Weyd sorcerers. But with each discovery comes a new set of risks, and the happenings on the Isle of Branikdür arouse the concern of the Helum Empire, and a cabal of warlocks of a far deadlier ilk than anything the Weyd has to offer.
