Obsidian Mountain Trilogy
3 primary works • 4 total works Complete
Book 1
The Outstretched Shadow, the first book in The Obsidian Trilogy from Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
Kellen Tavadon, son of the Arch-Mage Lycaelon, thought he knew the way the world worked. His father, leading the wise and benevolent Council of Mages, protected and guided the citizens of the Golden City of the Bells. Young Mages in training--all men, for women were unfit to practice magic--memorized the intricate details of High Magic and aspired to seats on the council.
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.
Book 2
Now, in "To Light a Candle," the Demon Queen sends her forces against her human and elven enemies, sowing distraction and death. In the human City, the Queen's agents work to divide the Council and foment rebellion among the City's citizens. In the countryside, they target the most vulnerable and valuable---the young Elf Prince and the Wild Mages who might be the Demons' most dangerous enemies.
To his own surprise, young Kellen, once the disappointing son of the great Mage who leads the City's Mage Council, has become a powerful Knight-Mage. Valued for his bravery and his skills as both wizard and warrior, Kellen joins the Elves' war councils. Yet he cannot convince the City of his birth that it is in terrible danger.
Kellen's sister Idalia, a Wild Mage with great healing ability, has pledged her heart to Jermayan, a proud Elven warrior. Someday Idalia will pay a tragic Price for a world-saving work of Wild Magic, but until then, she will claim any joy life can offer her. Jermayan, who has learned much while fighting at Kellen's side and loving the human Idalia, finds that everything changes when he Bonds with a dragon while rescuing the Elf Prince and becomes the first Elven Mage in a thousand years.
Furious at her enemies' success with the dragon, the Demon Queen attacks in force. Light struggles against Dark, like flickering candleflames buried deep in the shadow of Obsidian f0 Mountain.
Book 3
When Darkness Falls, the third book in The Obsidian Trilogy from Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
A great working of Wild Magic and High Magic strikes at the heart of the Demon Queen's plots, but the human city, the Golden City of the Bells, falls farther under her sway with each day that passes. And without the City's High Magicians, the Wild Magicians, the Elven Army, and all their allies will surely fall before the onslaught of the Demon Queen's malignant warriors.
But all hope is not lost. The Light's young mages, tempered by war, grow ever more powerful. High Mage Cilarnen learns an ancient secret that can make him, for a brief, white-hot time, the greatest mage in the world--unless it kills him.
Jermayan, the first Elf-Mage in centuries, has linked with the dragon Ancaladar and rediscovered the swift-as-thought powers of Elven magic, which can reshape mountains and summon lightning from clear skies.
Knight-Mage Kellen has molded his troops and the Unicorn Knights into a deadly fighting force. Soon the Elven King and his Commanders put Kellen's magical gifts to their greatest test, in the final battle between the Elves, the humans, and the Demons.
Books 1-3