ABANDONED. Fantasy series, fencing/sword fighting school/alternate universe

[Corinne]

I'm been trying to remember a book I read about 15 years ago. So late 90's early 2000's. My memory on it is really sketchy but here are some of the points that stick in my brain.
*Fantasy (3book series maybe)
*The characters are in a fencing school or belong to a freestyle fencing club. The skills they learn help them to fight in an alternate universe.
*The path to the other world is through a tunnel where time stops. Eventually a woman who is mortally ill stays in the tunnel to guard it. Because time stands still she will never die and she can sit and knit forever.
*Possible romance or romantic sub-plot

That's all I can remember at the moment . I'm hoping this triggers someone's memory. :)

[Peter]

Are the characters from our world and enter a fantasy world? Joel Rosenberg's Keepers of the Hidden Ways series was about college students from our world getting involved with Norse gods or some such. I don't remember much, but the fact that at least one character was a fencer was a big plot point. The first book was The Fire Duke.

[Lara]

Hmm. This is probably the wrong series, but just in case... The Wiz series by Rick Cook, starting with Wizard's Bane, at one point has some people from our world come to the fantasy land to help fight, but I think the people were LARPers mostly - some could have been fencers. Actually they have to unlearn a lot of their boffer-weapon skills in order to be good at fighting with real weapons. I don't remember a time-stop tunnel. And you'd probably remember the main detail of the book - that the main character is a programmer and ends up being really good at magic in the fantasy world because of his coding skills. Figured I'd try since no one knew your series for so long.

Link to Wizard's Bane: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...

[Kris]

No response, moving to Abandoned folder.

Corinne (OP) was last active on the site in July 2016.