K.V. Johansen

Candlemark & Gleam. Cover art by Laura Galli.

A long-retired swordswoman, saviour of godlings and killer of emperors, takes to the road again with her shapeshifting companion and the ghost of her brother…

The vhalgod Hedge was once Naskanna Deathdealer, bastard daughter of the Emperor, Captain of the Second Company of his Golden Guard. In the last days of the wars she cut off the Emperor her father’s head and wandered away across the world, with the ghost of her vhaldrachen brother Jinn bound to a flute made from a bone of his wing. The wild godling Thallyn, freed from captivity in the Emperor’s palace, also went wandering, homeless and heartsick. Her path recrossed that of Naskanna Deathdealer, and after more long years of wandering together, Hedge and Thallyn (Pony to her friends) settled down in the far north-west, with a garden and an orchard and some ducks; there, they thought, they would stay, and let the world get on without them. But a human girl named Arrany has come in search of the legendary Naskanna Deathdealer: her brother Penryl has fallen prey to a life-draining witch. That witch, she claims, was once the magus known as Spider -- with whom Hedge and Pony have an old, old score to settle.