The High Duties of Pacia: The Complete Saga

Imagine a world populated with the entire spectrum of humanity. Good people – ordinary citizens of small cities – fear attack from brutal and powerful men called the Zafiri. Great Cities are divided between the decadence and splendor of the wealthy and the deprivation and squalor of the poor. An organization of women known as the Sistéria is widely known but little understood. Its members have the talent to use ‘effect,’ the ability the read and control the emotions of others, and sometimes to have prescient visions of the future. And people in Pàçia, a land with an ancient history set apart from the rest of the world, were once gentle, kind and peaceful. Their leaders did not have the power to rule or command; they had duties to fulfill – High Duties which for millennia helped make the world a better place. That is, until twelve years before this story startrd when the Zafiri invaded Pàçia with a massive army, capturing the beautiful city Abbelôn and crushing the gentle people. Now the rest of the world is threatened by more war and destruction.

Then an extraordinary young woman named Sistére Graice crosses paths with a man unlike any she has met before. Her ‘effect,’ her ability to control everyone else, has no power over him. Known only as Holder, the man has no memory and doesn’t know his own identity. Along with Graice’s mentor Sybille, they begin a journey – and only Sybille knows the destination.

Elsewhere, a boy age thirteen travels with his aunt (his sole surviving relative) hiding from enemy spies by moving constantly and using false names and disguises. He can’t remember his parents and doesn’t even know his own name.

A girl named Caelia, also thirteen, hides from the same enemy. She lives with many other refugees in a cavern where her father searches for secrets of the Anziên people, a civilization which collapsed 3,500 years earlier. She knows nothing of the outside world until she insists on joining a trade expedition to acquire the food they need to survive.

Clearly all four have a destiny to fulfill although they do not yet know what it is. Gradually they realize it must involve freeing Abbelôn from the Zafiri, but the four are all dedicated pacifists. How can they expel the vicious enemy without resorting to violence themselves?