Argosi Trilogy

The Alchemist meets The Three Musketeers - with card tricks - in the first of two prequels to the bestselling Spellslinger series. A brilliant origin story of adventure, wit, and philosophy to enrapture devotees as well as newcomers to the series. Ferius Parfax has a simple plan: kill every last inhabitant of the spell-gifted nation that destroyed her people, starting with the man who murdered her parents. Killing mages is a difficult and dangerous business, of course, but when she meets the inimitable and extraordinary Durrall Brown, she discovers that physical strength is not the only way to defeat evil of all kinds. So Ferius undertakes to study the ways of the Argosi: the loosely knit tribe of tricksters known for getting the better of even the most powerful of spellcasters. But the Argosi have a price for their teachings, and by the time Ferius learns what it is, it may be too late.

A brilliant story of adventure, wit, and philosophy from the origins of the “Spellslinger” series to enrapture devotees as well as newcomers alike. New to the ways of the Argosi, the tribe of wandering philosophers who seek to defeat evil by wit and guile, Ferius Parfax encounters a hideous plague-the Red Scream. Highly contagious, caught by the hearing of a deadly verse, it turns its victims into mindless monsters that destroy all human life they come into contact with. With the help of a deaf boy whom she has saved from two horrifying victims of the plague, Ferius sets out to find the source of the Red Scream and overcome its terrifying power. Along the way she is joined by another Argosi, Rosie, who purports to be much wiser and more adept than Ferius, but who turns out to have her own dark secrets.