Bardic Voices

Young, brash, and impulsive, Rune backs up a brag by ascending Skull Hill to play fiddle for the malevolent spirit that resides there, striking a bargain with the ghost to surrender her soul if he tires of her playing before sunrise.

Rune, Robin, and Nightingale. Together they will save us all. (If we're very lucky) Rune: She ran away from an abusive home to become the greatest violinist her world had ever known-and when The Ghost of Skull Hill tried to stop her, she played him to sleep! Robin: No mean musician herself, she must make her own visit to Skull Hill-to recruit the dreadful ghost to their cause. Nightingale: Alone she could accomplish nothing. So she joined forces with T'fyrr, a strange nonhuman with the face of a raptor and the voice of an angelic choir. This unlikely set of heroes had the daunting task of saving the King-and through him the Gypsies, Free Bards, and non-humans of the twenty kingdoms. Fortunately, their opponents had no idea how potent a weapon music could be...

Disturbed by the growing presence of the Church throughout Alanda, Nightingale fears for her non-human friends and joins forces with birdman T'fyrr in a quest to save the High King.

A magical maniac is loose in Alanda! A magical murderer is loose in Alanda. The victims are always women, always lower-class, and the weapon is always a three-sided stiletto, most often found among Church regalia. But the killers are never churchmen, and they always commit suicide immediately after the bloody deed. Tal Rufen is just a simple constable. But he really cares about his job, and when one of these murder/suicides happens on his beat he becomes obsessed. His superiors don't care-the victims will never be missed, and their murderers are already justly dead. But every instinct Tal Rufen has cries out that he has seen only one small piece of a bigger and much nastier puzzle...