Mini Synopsis for Crossings

Malvius Trent is a highwayman.  His childhood friend, Bowman, has joined him in forsaking lives of nobility and title to roam the roads in search of adventure.  In fact, they've become so good at their ventures that they have so far managed to keep their identities secret. Malvius falls in love with an innkeeper's daughter, and promising his love that he will come at midnight to spirit her away and end his lawless days.  Ann's nemesis, catching wind of their plan, alerts the King's militia.  As Malvius arrives a day late, they lay in wait for him using Ann as bait. The lovers are shot dead by the militia, riddled with bullets and mutilated beyond recognition.  Why then, a year later, do they appear alive and well and riding as companions to the enigmatic Bowman?  Their relationship strained, the normally docile Ann leaves the group after slitting the throat of a drunk at an inn, drawing the law's attention.  A string of brutal murders and kidnappings at various posh resorts, draw Sheriff Boggs and his deputy Gareth Kael into the mystery.  The evidence found at the scene of the murders leads them to believe they were committed by Ann Tremayne, who they thought dead.



Believing that Ann is on the run, Sheriff Boggs sends Kael on a journey from the once fertile farm lands of KingsCross to the other side of the River.  There lies the industrial city of MayBrent, built by the very man who ran Kael's family off their land years before. He continues on, interviewing the deposed heiress of the MayBrent fortune, Melody, who has become a news woman and seems also interested in the new sightings of Malvius and Ann.  He discovers she has employed the services of a man from the Orien, a mythical place where black magics are practiced and blacker arts are taught.



Parallel to Kael's journey, Malvius Trent embarks on his own quest to find the answers to he and Ann's continued existence.  The stranger who saved them, Old Gun, had somehow brought them back to life, but how?  The answer lies on the red plain, where a goddess has found that her favorite imp has absconded with two stones she put in his keeping.  The two unfortunate lovers had caught his eye in his wanderings, and he saw that the black hearted Melody was at the heart of the vengeful plot because of a love spurned.  In his attempt to put things right, he has confused the natural order of things and must be hunted down by the mage of the Orien, Feng. Our story concludes as Malvius Trent finds Melody, who was posing as Ann, on the gallows and about to hang.  The boy who holds her trump card to freedom becomes her Judas and denies she is an imposter. Unable to stop the mob crowd bent on destroying the murderess of so many children, Malvius watches as Melody hangs.  There are no formal trials, for the old Witch Hunts have begun anew. With the stones returned, Malvius and Ann's spirits are freed from the shackles of life.  The imp Ogun is taken to task for the theft of the stones, the enigmatic Feng returns to the Orien with a few new students, and Gareth Kael completes his journey of self-discovery to find that life and death are not laid out in black and white, but in many shades of gray.