Guild Mage

There are a lot of things wrong with Liv Brodbeck.She’s too small, for one thing. When she works in the castle kitchens with her mother, she can’t carry a sack of flour or roll a keg of ale.Baron Summerset’s chirurgeon says that she has brittle bones, so she isn’t allowed to wrestle or sword fight with the other children. Even sledding downhill in the winter brings the risk of breaking an arm or a leg if she falls.Everyone says that she ruined her mother’s life when she was born. Not when they think Liv is in the room, of course, but she overhears all the same. In the kitchen of a less kind lord, a cook bearing a bastard child would have been more than cause enough for both of them to be out on the street.No, a child like Liv doesn’t have much hope. But when she accidentally unleashes a surge of wild magic, she takes her first step on a journey which will lead her from the kitchens of Castle Whitehill, to the cold palaces of the Eld, and beyond, to the graves of gods...

For Liv Brodbeck, magic has changed everything.Cel, the ancestral word of power inherited from her father, now slumbers in the back of her mind. After years of study, the ancient magic of the Old Gods is hers to wield, from brutal, cutting shards of ice, to frozen, immovable walls. No longer a mere scullion, she is now an apprentice of the Watchful Guild of Magim, under her teacher, Master Grenfell.Her peaceful days of training are cut short by the Day of Blood, when monstrous, living orbs of viscera slaughter innocent people across the Kingdom of Lucania. The king calls a great council, and Liv must accompany Baron Summerset and his family to the capital of Freeport. Overwhelmed by the bustle of the city, she, the bastard daughter of a castle cook, is thrust into the schemes and machinations of the royal court.But while Liv fights to prove herself amidst the intrigue of Lucania, across the sea, on the western continent of Varuna, another foe builds their power. Ractia, the resurrected Lady of Blood, is gathering her forces, which will make the chaos of the Day of Blood only the first taste of the goddess's return.For in the wake of the Lady of Blood's coming, rifts across the world erupt more frequently than ever before...

At the Coral Bay College of Vædic Grammar, Liv Brodbeck will learn magic from the most powerful mages in Lucania.With a powerful, second word of power that she can't reveal to anyone, a new bodyguard in Wren Wind Dancer, and political backing from the powerful Summerset family, who are now Dukes of Whitehill, Liv is finally in a position to prepare herself for the impending war against the Lady of Blood.But not everyone at the college is concerned with talent alone - and being a half-Elden bastard is enough to earn her plenty of enemies among the children of the aristocracy who make up the student body.And with one of the Old Gods once again growing her power after twelve hundred years, not even Coral Bay is safe.

After surviving the attack on Coral Bay, Liv Brodbeck's most deadly secret is in danger of being exposed.To protect her, Archmagus Jurian sends Liv, Wren, and Arjun with a group of Journeymen to the fortress-city of Akela Kila, in Arjun's homeland of Lendh ka Dakruim. The Well of Bones, grave of the Vædic Lady Costia, is erupting, spewing forth an endless tide of re-animated corpses, and Liv will need to use everything she's learned to survive.But the true danger waits for her back at Coral Bay, where the future of the Mages Guild is thrown into turmoil by the new monarch of Lucania...