The Bard's Blade (The Sorcerer's Song, #1)

Mariyah enjoys a simple life in Vylari, a land magically sealed off from the outside world, where fear and hatred are all but unknown. She helps her family make wine and spends time with her betrothed, Lem, a musician of rare talent. Their destiny has never been in question. Whatever life brings, they will face it together.

But destiny has a way of choosing its own path, and when a stranger crosses the wards into Vylari for the first time in centuries, the two are faced with a terrible prophecy. Beyond the borders, an ancient evil is returning, its age-old prison shattered. Not even the Thaumas, keepers of knowledge and wielders of magic from the outside world, know how to defeat it.

Venturing into the wider world means facing sorcerers and thieves, con-men and assassins, but the two will go as far as it takes to stop the rising darkness and save their home