A Song for Arbonne

Locus Award nominee 1993.

Until the sun dies and the moons fall, Gorhut and Arbonne shall not lie easily beside each other...

Arbonne
Warm and sun-blessed in the south, a country of olive trees and vineyards, of troubadours and courts of love, of the sensuous, flamboyant women and men who worship the mother goddess. A land of intense and enduring passions where two powerful dukes feud over the love and death of a woman and the disappearance of her child.

Gorhaut
Land of hard, dour northern men, pious in their worship of the god Corannos and rapacious in war. Ruled by an ambitious, debauched young king under the subtle, manipulative guidance of Galbert, High Elder of the god, the warriors of Gorhaut look south and see a land ripe for the taking, ruled by a woman and blasphemously worshipping a goddess.

Moving through these two very different worlds is Blaise, a sardonic, bitter northern mercenary who serves amidst the cultured decadence of Arbonne. In a time of testing and great peril, the men and women of both countries find their lives – and their ideas of what life should be – placed squarely in the balance. And Blaise is forced to confron the darkest secrets of his past and the sharply branching pathways of the future.

“A thoughtful, literate adventure filled with rich details and vivid characters.” – San Francisco Chronicle