Mercenary partners, Dhulyn and Parno, are back in this fourth entry to the series; their bond made even stronger by recent adventures in The Storm Witch. This time they are escorting the Princess Cleona of Arderon and her cousin Alaria to a politically arranged marriage with the Tarkin of Menoin in Uraklios. Their deeper purpose is to track two other Mercenary Brethren who disappeared with no word from the same city a year before.

Within a day of their arrival, the Princess is found murdered in a slow and torturous ritual manner. She is only one of seven victims found in the previous year, according to their old friends, Gundaron and Mar-eMar, who were posted in Uraklios to explore a vast ruin and ancient maze of the Caids.

Prince Falcos and his uncle Epion send mixed signals, seeming to both help and hinder the hunt for the murderer. One of them is lying, but Dhulyn and Parno need more evidence to discover who is telling the truth.

In seeking both the lost mercenaries and the killer, Dhulyn and Parno attempt the maze named Path of the Sun and find themselves in a world where Dhulyn's people, the Red Horsemen, are thriving. The Marked of that land, however, are all cursed from birth; unable to behave in a human manner, sentenced to death before they can become monsters. The Red Horsemen keep their Marked women sequestered, hidden from those who might kill them, but also imprisoned so that their madness can do no harm to the tribes.

In THE PATH OF THE SUN, Malan has provided a plot snapping with action and danger. The search for the murderer provides a dark and fascinating background to this fourth Dhulyn and Parno adventure.

Book Summary

Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane think they’re escorting the Princess of Arderon to her wedding with the new Tarkin of Menoin, but the Mercenary Brotherhood has a secret mission for them: find out what happened to the two Brothers who were sent on assignment to Menoin a year ago, and who have disappeared.

Once in Menoin they find old friends, the Scholars Gundaron and Mar-eMar. There to investigate some old Caid ruins, Gun and Mar suspect that the disappearance of the Mercenary Brothers is linked to a series of killings. When the Princess of Arderon’s corpse is found, mutilated in the same way as the others, Dhulyn and Parno track the killer into the Path of the Sun, an ancient labyrinth from which people sometimes don’t return.

But Mercenaries are not ordinary people, and Dhulyn and Parno draw on their Schooling to reach the centre of the Path. What they find there is another world, a world in which the Red Horsemen — Dhulyn’s nomad people — have not been wiped out, a world in which the Marked are hunted down and killed as ‘broken’.

Dhulyn and Parno must locate their missing Brothers, identify the killer, and find their way back through the Path of the Sun before Dhulyn’s own Mark is discovered.