A painted sword is their only protection from evil sorcery, strange creatures, and enemy forces.

On the spell-crossed Phaer Isle, teenage Xemion dreams of being a great swordsman. When he finds a blade-shaped stick, he fashions it to look like a real sword. Knowing that the laws of their cruel Pathan conquerors would require a death sentence for possession of such an object, his friend Saheli demands he destroy it. He agrees, but insists on performing just one sword ceremony. When his mastery of the weapon, a skill long forgotten, is witnessed by a mysterious man named...

Tharfen might be the only person who can save the Phaer Isle, but she is missing a very important part of herself.

In Book 3 of the Spell Crossed series, Tharfen, now eighteen, is still playing unwilling host to a shattered piece of her old friend turned enemy, Xemion. But no one seems to know where Xemion is, though rumours abound. As the Great Kone approaches its first full turn in fifty years, the unstable magic it unleashes grows more and more dangerous for all the Phaerlanders. Meanwhile, other perils abound: a vast influx of refugees from the Civil War in the north...