It is summer of the Dark Ages as the boy, Thaddeus, turns fourteen, and an old vagabond appears in Beewicke offering the promise of a fine education in trade for the lad.  Gold exchanges hands and the youth goes off in the old man’s cart.  Later, he is joined by two other boys recruited by their new Master, Silvestrus of Somerset.  Their journey to the College of Sorcerers is perilous, and on the way they are beset by brigands, a daemon, a black-haired courtesan, the Queen of the Moths, members of the thieves’ guild, tree fiends, ghost legions, greensward Aelvae and a mysterious Cinnian assassin.