Dark historical fantasy
NORMANDY, 1256. A BOY'S MUTILATED BODY IS FOUND IN THE WOODS NEAR A BENEDICTINE ABBEY.
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When Amaury de la Roche, commander of the Knights Templar, returns to his family's seat, his sister has already brought a blood-soaked stranger back from the forest. Melanie d'Eville calls herself the victim of a terrible crime. The Inquisition calls her a witch. Amaury must decide who to believe before the fire is lit.
A sardonic friar leads him to a prophecy that reaches far beyond anything a Norman knight was meant to know. His path binds him to people he should never have met: a shaman from the Mongolian steppe and a young woman out of Novgorod. Their languages, their gods and their ideas of the world could hardly differ more. And still, an old story seems to tie their fates together.
What begins as a fight for family and survival becomes a journey through a medieval world where Christian faith collides with older traditions, power with superstition, and every miracle might also be a deception.
A curse gnaws at the house of de la Roche. And the song that lies over all of it is far from finished.
For readers of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale.
An excerpt from the novel was longlisted for the Etnopero 2025 Literary Award.
An ancient voice
Four destinies, named long before their paths converge.
Shaman, Seeress, Sword-brother, Sorceress—four;
Two rise at sunrise, two from sunset’s shore.A twin Sword-brother, vowed to blade and creed,
Named as the Rock—in faith and faithful deed.A Shaman, silver-haired yet young in stride,
Bear-hearted, sky-eyed, lord of the steppe-horse ride.In forest deeps the northern Seeress threads,
Sure with the bow, as cunning as a marten treads.Their woven paths, by hidden will, align
To save the sorceress—named a witch—when comes the time.
An excerpt from The Songs of Adhartach
NORMANDY · NOVGOROD · THE GOLDEN HORDE · BYZANTIUM
In Normandy, fear speaks through judgment and accusation. In Novgorod, forest signs and folk magic have their own language. In the steppe, song carries memory and shamanic power demands a price. The journey also reaches the lightless catacombs of Byzantium. These strands meet around people choosing between imposed duty and conscience.
CHARACTERS
Before dawn, Agnès slips out through the back gates on her black horse, Firefly. A bow, arrows and a narrow Venetian dagger await her in a hollow tree. Then a woman cries out, and the hunt is forgotten. Her hands shake; the knots refuse to yield. Still she tries to free the stranger, with armed men already on her trail.
The wind pulls at his white cloak and its red cross. Fine scars mark the young face framed by fair hair. From Acre, Amaury brought a sword he could not surrender even to the Rule of his order. Ten years ago he left the family castle for the Holy Land. Now a letter from his sister calls him back as a brother.
By the stream she lies bound and barely alive, her red hair scattered over the earth. In the castle, Agnès meets another woman: green eyes bright with mischief, feline grace, a serpent and a rose coiled around a turquoise stone on her finger. Melanie calls her rescuer a friend. Beyond the walls, men are searching for a witch.
His white hair is easily mistaken for old age. Yet this stocky, sharp-eyed traveller knows how to wield a staff and make armed men regret their haste. As a boy, he stopped a herd at the edge of a precipice; now he walks far from his native steppe. Beneath the fox-fur hat and easy smile lives the long memory of his clan.
Dressed as a young man, an unfamiliar bow over her shoulder, Zoryanka studies the Norman knight. Could he be a Swede? As the shaman speaks, her knife carves a marten from a twig. Beneath ash-blond hair, her eyes take in everything. Forest signs are familiar to her; French words and customs are not. Her bow and knife remain dependable companions.
A chuckle breaks the silence of a locked chapel. An uninvited friar taps a saint’s statue on the forehead, argues with the bewildered Templar and helps himself to the wine. He knows secret passages and ancient scrolls, yet turns every solemn exchange towards a joke. This is the visitor who brings Amaury a prophecy in which the knight recognises himself.
Clean black-and-white robes, a lean, eagle-like face, watchful dark eyes. Bernard de Caux enters the castle with armed men and a papal commission. He speaks gently, almost kindly: surely Agnès sheltered the witch in ignorance? Then come the reminders of excommunication and confiscation. An answer must be weighed as carefully as if every word were already being entered in the record.
The baron was comely; black clothing set off his noble face, yet his bearing reminded Agnes of a wolf—strong and pitiless, ready to destroy any foe with a predator’s lunge.
Louis IX, Batu Khan and the Genoese admiral Oberto Doria all lived in the thirteenth century. Discover what they did in history and how they appear in The Songs of Adhartach.
Meet the historical figures →Inside the novel
From the Norman cliffs to the khan’s court. Choose a place on the map to discover what brings the characters there.
Later scenes are hidden. Turn on spoilers to explore every place.
Map imagery: Natural Earth II. Chartres · J.-B.-A. Lassus · Public domain. Mont-Saint-Michel · Cornell University Library · CC BY 2.0.
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