Fantasy Author Verna McKinnon

Familiars.

Magical animal companions of sorcerers.

Keepers of spells and secrets, guardians and watchers.

Most important, devoted friends who bond with their mages for life.

When one such familiar, Mellypip, is bonded to the young sorceress, Runa,he experiences the wonders of magical life. Together, Mellypip and his sorceress train under the tutelage of Runa's grandfather, Cathal, and his familiar, the magnificent mountain owl, Belwyn.

Life seems peaceful, but they soon learn that secrets and sorcery do not mix, and a darkness from Cathal's past returns, threatening to reveal the truth about Runa's parents: a truth from which Cathal has strove to protect the young sorceress.

When the unthinkable happens, Runa and Mellypip are thrust into a world of violence and intrigue. With the help of their trusted friends, they set out to stop those that mean their family harm. ...But time is running out.

Runa and Mellypip must discover who is behind these events and stop them before the Gate of Souls is opened, and the demonic minions of The Otherworld overrun the mortal realms.

Two curses.

A curse of Darkness... Deep within the Thill forest, stands a tree made of human bones, crowned in black leaves and red thorns.

A curse of Light... Beneath the Wastelands of Skarros, a crystal imprisons a dark, immortal queen.

The Sorceress, Runa, is tormented by horrific images of this tree of bones in a distant, lifeless forest. Even as the visions debilitate her, Mellypip, her beloved familiar, also experiences these sinister dreams, bound by the same dream seer magic as his mistress. The tree of bones summons Runa, and she must risk madness and death as obsession drives her on. What she finds reveals a devastating truth.

Koll the Sorcerer awaits trial for his crimes. His familiar, Xabral, searches for allies to free him. Driven by his own dreams of dark prophecy, Koll seeks to free Obsydia, the Bloodstone Queen, from her prison. Determined to let nothing stop him, Koll will commit any evil to achieve his goal.

Runa and Mellypip’s newest journey reveals truths behind ancient secrets, as Koll’s obsessive hunt for a fallen queen threatens to doom the world forever. Runa and Koll, bound by opposing magical destinies of Light and Dark, will ultimately face frightening revelations and unimagined consequences.

Rose Greenleaf dreams of becoming a bard and making her mark on the world. Her mother, Gerta, sees her daughter as a hopeless spinster at seventeen with abysmal cooking and sewing skills. With devious machinations worthy of the devil himself, her mother betroths Rose to her husband’s new partner.

Just to escape the coming nuptials and prove her own musical worth, Rose’s headlong flight runs her into the hands of slavers, a master spy, a dispossessed prince, a soul-sucking changeling, and into the middle of an insidious plot to take over a kingdom - a much more preferable choice of perils.

Magic is currency in Sabine Fable’s world. After an epidemic of mage fever stole it from her family, Sabine came into the world a baseborn without position or hope. She struggles through life with a frail mother and a drunken, abusive grandfather.

Sabine’s stubbornness and her skills in herbalism carve out a tenuous niche for her family in a society where mageborns rule. She cares for her mother, Brona Fable, who still suffers from the aftereffects of the disease as an outcast in a small town. For Sabine’s devotion and ignoble birth, she has been teased, abused, and ridiculed for most of her young life.

Veda, a sorceress who once trained Sabine’s mother, arrives in town to further her controversial work toward a possible cure for mage fever and its side effects. Brona Fable secures her daughter an honorable position assisting Veda’s mission. Sabine reluctantly leaves her mother to forge her own path. She learns the road to possibly restore her magic and help others like her is thorny with mysterious and diabolical forces that threaten the cure, her family, and herself.