Berg, Carol

A brand new fantasy trilogy from an author who "brilliantly brings out her characters" (Denver Post). For Portier de Savin-Duplais, failed student of magic, sorcery's decline into ambiguity and cheap illusion is but a culmination of life's bitter disappointments. Reduced to tending the library at Sabria's last collegia magica, he fights off despair with scholarship. But when the King of Sabria charges him to investigate an attempted murder that has disturbing magical resonances, Portier believes his dreams of a greater destiny might at last be fulfilled...

With no magic talent of her own, Anne de Vernase must take on her sister's magical legacy to unravel the secrets behind the dark sorcery besieging the royal city of Merona-and to uncover the truth behind her sister's death.

Valen, the rebellious son of a pureblood cartographer and a diviner, is left for dead in the rainy wilderness, where he becomes addicted to a magic that transforms pain into pleasure, but his addiction soon threatens his ability to protect a stolen book of maps that lead to the realm of angels.