Kestrel Harper Saga

Elyri. ágdháni. Miracle worker. Saint. Outcast. All that Kavan ever wanted was to be a normal man, the bard he has trained his entire life to be. But, prophecy has a bad habit of thwarting the best plans and intentions. From the moment he meets Arlan, the infant, prince of Enesfel, the path Kavan, imagined for himself is, overthrown by forces, beyond his control. When Owain Lachlan, a man of dubious heritage, assumes the mantle of king, it falls upon Kavan's shoulders to guide and aid the inexperienced Prince Arlan in claiming the throne that is his birthright. Kavan's personal quest for acceptance, from others and from himself, becomes, entwined with threads of politics and Faith, and not even prophecy can guarantee what fate awaits him.

Enesfel had known peace for eleven years. The reign of Arlan Lachlan ushered in a period of prosperity the kingdom had not enjoyed since the days of Kings Innis and Donal. In Rhidam, Kavan's life settled into a comfortable routine of music and the tutoring of the royal Lachlan children, an effort to hide, to leave the epitaphs of miracle-worker and saint behind. A specter from the past, however, brings with it a rumor, and King Arlan is forced to reconcile history with the future if Enesfel is to maintain stability throughout the Five Sovereignties. As Enesfel prepares for war, Kavan is pulled from his King's side by a frantic race against destiny to protect the lives of innocent children…for only Kavan has any hope of thwarting the path the Sight has stretched out before him…while bringing him face to face with a secret buried in Elyriá's antiquity and opening a portal perhaps better left closed.

Of all of the horrors he could imagine… …he never imagined this. Ashamed and devastated by a pair of selfish acts that destroy the life he has built, believing himself condemned to worthlessness, Kavan flees the potential rejection of those who claim to love him in search of reconciliation and restoration where no one will know his face…or his name. In Rhidam, his friends and family are left to struggle with the loss of his cornerstone strength and the rise of an ancient, pervasive evil that will leave no life in Enesfel, or the Sovereignties, untouched if it cannot be quickly thwarted. Unlike in days past, the Lachlans must face this challenge alone, seeking allies and enemies wherever they can find them without Kavan's guiding wisdom. With the possibility of redemption dangling just beyond his reach, Kavan's flight takes him deep into the unfamiliar arid lands beyond Hatu's southern border. The need to escape rejection and find purpose, battling his personal demons with Wortham Delamo at his side, becomes intertwined with a quest for knowledge and cleansing that could set Enesfel back on its proper course, or could destroy Kavan and everything…everyone…he has ever loved. It might also open a window into knowledge that, once found, could forever alter the world as Kavan knows it.

The path spred before Kavan, to undo an ancient wrong and cleanse away the primordial evil seething at the heart of Enesfel, at the heart of an Teren-Elyi conflict that had boiled for centuries, meant going back. Going home. Facing the pain he had tried to forget. Facing the adoration the healing of his hands would certainly generate. Facing Princess Diona again. He did not feel ready. He did not want to go. But Kórahm had bid it, and Kavan knew there was no thwarting destiny. Unsure of what awaited him, unsure what the Heretic-Saint's commission would lead him to, be it victory or death, Kavan accepted the inevitable and began the arduous journey back to Rhidam, back to family and friends, back to himself with Wortham at his side in a desperate race against a deadline he could not foresee. With that evil dogging him at every turn, the young Lachlan King fighting to find his footing in an adult world he felt ill-prepared for, and Rhidam struggling for its very survival against the taint of the Elyri-hating Corylliens, Kavan could not know if he would arrive in time to do what history demanded of him. Or if there would be anything left of the world he had known, those he loved the most, if he did. He had to succeed. He did not believe Rhidam, or the Lachlans, or the Elyri in Enesfel would survive another year if he failed.

The Corylliens refused to die. Despite Kavan's purification of the ancient chapel, the controversial election of a Teren k'gdhededhá in Rhidam allows the cult to persist, plaguing Elyri and Teren alike. As the death toll rises, the hunt for the elusive Anri Heward, and anyone else behind the festering anti-Elyri hatred, pushes forward. Longing to settle into a serene life of music and family in Bhryell, the problems in Enesfel should no longer be Kavan's concern. But, Enesfel's violence spills into Elyriá on the heels of k'gdhededhá Dórímyr's unanticipated, controversial, long overdue first visit to Rhidam... a visit with the potential to destroy every step Enesfel has taken towards peace. The high-profile murder that follows reluctantly drags Kavan into a frantic pursuit through history, secrets, and shadow, to piece together the puzzle of murder before the backlash it creates rips the Faith and the Sovereignties apart, kills people he loves, or results in his own excommunication...or death.

Settled into the domestic life of father, benefactor, bard, and duke, Kavan had forgotten that one small, disconnected fragment of Sight...until the loss of the one he loved most led him to find the broken, beautiful woman discarded on the banks of his lake. Discarded there by a Gate that should not exist. Discarded in a way that should not be possible. One glimpse of her and he knew that she, like the Sight, was a portent of change that promised to turn his world upside down. She brought the old familiar self-doubts thundering back and threatened to fulfill that promise of upheaval with a swell of heart wrenching possibilities. With famine and plague twisting the Sovereignties in the wind, change would come, regardless of the choices he made. What those changes could mean, what they would be, would depend on whether he chose to pass through the doors of history and knowledge she opened...or whether he closed his eyes and turned his back on the secrets his people, his Faith, his blood had too long denied.