The Whitefire Crossing

I was surprised to find that The Whitefire Crossing is Courtney Schafer's first book as it seems very polished for a first work.
Dev is an caravan outrider, a mountaineer, and a smuggler. When he takes the job of smuggling a man, Kiran, to a neighboring country, he finds that he has plunged himself squarely in the middle of a conflict between mages.
The Whitefire Crossing starts off as an adventure novel involving a lot of mountain climbing and then turns into a fantasy with powerful magic and lots of action. Recommended.