The Damiano Trilogy

Book excerpt: An alternate-history fantasy of faith and wizardry set during the Italian Renaissance from the author of Tea with the Black Dragon. Discover three novels of magic—light and dark—from a winner of the John W. Campbell and Philip K. Dick awards. In Damiano, our hero is Damiano Dalstrego, a wizard’s son, an alchemist, and the heir to dark magics. But he is also an innocent, a young scholar and musician befriended by the Archangel Raphael, who instructs him in the lute. To save his beloved city from war, Damiano leaves his cloistered life and sets out on a pilgrimage, seeking the aid of a powerful sorceress as he walks the narrow path between light and shadow, accompanied only by his talking dog. But his road is filled with betrayal, disillusionment, and death . . . In Damiano’s Lute, shattered by the demonic fury of his dark powers, Damiano has forsaken his magical heritage to live as a mortal man. With the guidance of the Archangel Raphael, the chidings of a brash young rogue, and the memory of a beautiful pagan witch, he journeys across a plague-ridden French countryside in search of peace. But the Father of Lies reaches out once again . . . In Raphael, weakened by his contact with mortals, the Archangel Raphael falls prey to Lucifer, who strips him of his angelic powers. Sold in the Moorish slave markets, confused and humbled by his sudden humanity, Raphael finds his only solace in the friendship of a Berber woman—and the spiritual guardianship of his former pupil Damiano Delstrego. Now available in one volume, this epic of demons, dragons, romance, and heroic adventure is a saga you will never forget.