CLOAKS

Bess thinks she can be in and out of the town bogeyman’s basement in less than a minute. Instead, she winds up transported to another world, running for her life from black-cloaked, knife-wielding horsemen who will stop at nothing to keep her from returning home. For help she can only turn to a simple farm family—who, if anything fear the black-cloaked riders more than she does—and a somber, mysterious figure out of legend who has given her little reason to trust him.

But trust him she must, or perish. And in the ensuing whirlwind of kidnapping, murder, capture, escape, and rescue, Bess learns that trust is not a matter of first impressions, and that friendship can transcend barriers of time and space and, sometimes, even more.

PANDIR DECLOAKED

The conjunction between Heldrick’s world and our own has closed, leaving Heldrick, with Grayvle, on the side of his birth. The task he’s set for himself is no less than changing the policies of the Citadel from the inside, a task he expects to take a century or two. His only advantage is that everyone at the Citadel believes that he and Grayvle escaped through the conjunction before it collapsed.

He doesn't expect to live to see more than the first small steps in the process.

But then he and Grayvle rescue a young woman named Estrienn from the quistrils. Estrienn is sufficiently thankful for being rescued that she wants to join them. But she won’t tell them where she’s from or what she was doing out after curfew on a cold winter’s night.

More significantly, Grayvle is recognized during the rescue, and the quistril who recognized him gets away. Now Heldrick has lost his biggest advantage. The Citadel knows he’s there.

And, suddenly, planning for a centuries-long fruition to his task doesn’t seem like the best idea. . . .