Obsidian Trilogy #01: The Outstretched Shadow

There were three of them, at the bottom of a pile of ledgers, very slender volumes bound in some fine-grained, dark leather, with just a touch of gilt on the spine. Kellen found himself turning them over in his hands with some puzzlement. There was nothing on the spine of each but a single image-a sun, a crescent moon, and a star. Nothing on the cover, not even a bit of tooling, and the covers themselves were in pristine condition.

Odd. Definitely out of keeping with the rest of the used bookseller's wares.

He opened the front covers. The title pages were handwritten, not printed. The Book of Sun. The Book of Moon. The Book of Stars. He leafed through the pages, trying to puzzle out the tiny writing. The contents were handwritten as well . . . and seemingly dealt with magic.

They shouldn't be here at all! Kellen thought with a sudden surge of glee. Books on magic were very closely kept, with Students returning their workbooks to their Tutors as they outgrew them. And these weren't any of the recognized Student books, or anything like them, as far as Kellen could tell.

Without bothering to look through them further, he put them on the top of his pile and caught the stallholder's eye.

"Got younger sibs at home, do you?" the man asked as he wrote up a bill of sale with the merest stub of a graphite rod.

"No," said Kellen, startled. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, children's stories.... The man gestured at the three books. He handed Kellen his receipt.

Kellen studied it in confusion. There were his Histories, but what was this? Tales of the Weald, Fables of Farm and Field, and Hearth-side Stories?

There was something very odd about those books.

--from The Outstretched Shadow

Then he found the forbidden Books of Wild Magic-or did they find him? Their Magic felt like a living thing, guided by the hearts and minds of those who practiced it and benefited from it.

Questioning everything he has known, Kellen discovers too many of the City's dark secrets. Banished, with the Outlaw Hunt on his heels, Kellen invokes Wild Magic-and finds himself running for his life with a unicorn at his side.

Rescued by a unicorn, healed by a female Wild Mage who knows more about Kellen than anyone outside the City should, meeting Elven royalty and Elven warriors, and plunged into a world full of magical beings-Kellen both revels in and fears his new freedom.

The one thing all the Mages of the City agreed on was that practicing Wild Magic corrupted a Mage. Turned him into a Demon. Would that be Kellen's fate?

Deep in Obsidian Mountain, the Demons are waiting. Since their defeat in the last great War, they've been biding their time, sowing the seeds of distrust and discontent between their human and Elven enemies. Very soon now, when the Demons rise to make war, there will be no alliance between High and Wild Magic to stand against them. And then all the world will belong to the Endarkened.

Lackey often teams up with both her fellow masters of fantasy, such as Andre Norton and Anne McCaffrey, and talented newer writers Rosemary Edghill. Married to artist and sometime co-author Larry Dixon, Lackey, who was born in Chicago, lives near Tulsa, Oklahoma.