Mikelle Fraizer

The Beguilers -- Roman Centurion Mikelle Fraizer

The Romans arrive in Gaul in AD 28 at a black stone castle seemingly carved from the natural cliff face with tools far beyond the times. Inside are creatures not quite human, with formidable mind skills. They can kill with a single thought, but are few in number and are cut down by the Romans. The women look human and those without the lethal skills are taken as slaves. The children are largely ignored as the women are ravished ? until a ten-year-old prince steps forward and begins killing the Romans. Only the threat of killing his baby sister keeps him in check. It is Lucanus Karik, a black-haired boy with eyes which can change from blue to red. The fierce boy is subjugated by the prefect, prevented from using his mind-skills by the threat to his sister. When it is discovered he helped dozens of the alien children escape, it is too late to recapture them. Lucanus grows to manhood as a Roman, so educated and patrician in manner that he is taken for a Roman citizen, although unusually tall. His mind-skills unused, he develops an expertise with sword and javelin and becomes his new master?s personal guardsman. They travel back to Gaul with the Second Legion and Lucanus remembers his old self and his kinsmen, who should be out in the forest somewhere, if they survived. He must search for his kin, rescue the sister who has been separated from him all these years, and come to terms with the human lady who causes an unusual trembling within him. Heat passes from his skin to hers when he touches her, and Lucanus does not know what this means. He had been ten years old when taken from his people, and no Beguiler was there to explain his mysterious gifts ? and the fact only one woman can give him that extraordinary feeling. For readers of The Beguilers ? Crudic?s Apprentice, they know what comes next. The Beguilers ? Roman Centurion takes us to Britain, where the Romans return in AD 43 to conquer the local kings and the Second Legion is commanded by the man who would become Emperor ? Vespasian.