In this book of epic fantasy, a boy is taken to the Sorcerer’s College to learn the most powerful forms of the practice of magic. None could know the immensity of the ancient Evil that some believe dwells there unseen.

It is a summer of the Dark Ages when an old vagabond appears in Beewicke offering the parents of the boy, Thaddeus, the promise of a fine education and a trade for their son. Gold exchanges hands and the stranger and the boy go off in the old man’s cart, pulled by the sentient mule, Asullus.

On the journey, he is joined by two others recruited by their new Master — Anders of Brightfield Manor, a scholar, and Rolland of Fountaindale, a street thief. The three boys are unaware they are all the ultimate descendants of this very same Sorcerer.

Silvestrus begins the instruction of his charges by stating that the use of Sorcery is governed by Belief. If one has the inborn talent and the strength of Belief, one’s desires can take form — assuming any size, any shape and for any purpose. But he also warns them that each use of Sorcery shortens a Sorcerer’s life span by an unknowable quantity. The old man pronounces one last requirement — before he or she can command the use of Sorcery, a youth must first be intimate with a beloved.

Their quest for the College is perilous and on the way they are beset by beasts, brigands, a Demon, a black-haired Courtesan, the King of the Moths, tree fiends, ghost legions and Greensward Aelvae as they seek to achieve their final goal — the ancient and revered Collegium Sorcerorum.

The adventures of the book’s characters continue in two further volumes — Collegium Sorcerorum: Thaddeus and the Master, and Collegium Sorcerorum: Thaddeus and the Daemon.