The Sorcerer of the North

Five years have passed. Will is a graduated Ranger with his own fief — Seacliff, the smallest posting in the Corps, which is both the traditional starting assignment and the traditional indignity — when Crowley sends him north on a quiet, undercover mission. A nobleman’s castle has been seized by a lord claiming to be protected by a sorcerer. Find out whether the sorcerer is real.

The Sorcerer of the North is a tonal shift. The training-and-war arc of the first four books is over; what follows is a two-book mystery-thriller set in the gothic, half-forgotten fiefs of the north, with Will working alone under a false name. It ends on a direct cliffhanger into The Siege of Macindaw.