Showing results by author "Jeff Wheeler" in All Categories

The best of Deep Magic: Volume 1—fantastical worlds of space adventures, changelings, and dragons await—stories with depth, strong protagonists, high tension, all told while pulling at your heartstrings, or making you smile with understanding. In this volume, you'll find twenty-two stories, including many novelettes. Go on adventures from deep space to ancient Rome (with magic), to Mars, and many other new fantasy worlds.

Millennia ago, a magical race called the Aesir found a new home on a distant world. Attracted to the cold during an ice age, they hibernated for hundreds of years at a time. With each awakening, however, they saw their world changed by ever-evolving mortals encroaching on their territory and way of life. Two civilizations with opposing magic, poised to clash over and over. Now, the Aesir are awakening to wage a new war—this time to exterminate their enemy once and for all.

Survivor of a combat school, the orphaned Bingmei belongs to a band of mercenaries employed by a local ruler. Now the nobleman, and collector of rare artifacts, has entrusted Bingmei and the skilled team with a treacherous assignment: brave the wilderness’s dangers to retrieve the treasures of a lost palace buried in a glacier valley. But upsetting its tombs has a price.

A bargain was struck beyond memory, sealed by an immortal covenant that promised either peace or extinction for humanity. The Aesir will uphold this covenant, whatever the outcome, but the Erlking will do everything in his power to ensure their victory. Two people hold the key to defeating him, but only one of them remembers who they are.

A devastating plague continues to rage through the land of Muirwood, and all hope is laid at the feet of the young woman Lia. Called as a magical protector, Lia volunteers to embark on one last quest to rescue the knight-maston Colvin - her great love - and his pupil, the alleged heir to the fallen kingdom of Pry-Ree. Undaunted by injuries, Lia sets off across land and sea warning the kingdom of the great plague that is upon them. The arduous journey leads her to the doors of Dochte Abbey, where her friends are supposedly held. However, a fallen enemy lies in wait for Lia, as well as an unbearable new truth.

Against all odds, Owen Kiskaddon grew from frightened boy to confident youth to trusted officer in the court of Kingfountain - and watched its regent, Severn Argentine, grow ever more ruthless and power-mad. Robbed of his beloved protector, his noble mentor, and his true love, Owen has anticipated the day when the king he fears and reviles, yet loyally serves, will be toppled.

Eilean was born a “wretched”—a lowly foundling raised by the Aldermaston of Tintern Abbey. Then she’s chosen to assist in establishing the new abbey of Muirwood, now the site of a castle in the swampy Bearden Muir. Eilean’s role is as night servant to the druid Mordaunt, the king’s exiled advisor—and prisoner. He’s clever, dangerous, and invaluable to the Aldermaston.

Ransom Barton and his wife, Claire de Murrow, have arrived in Legault to reclaim the title that was Claire’s birthright. Claire intends to rebuild a war-ravaged palace to its former glory and to teach Ransom about the magical history of their new home. But when Ransom is summoned to return to King Benedict, his loyalty to Claire is tested. Fealty prevails, however questionable the king’s motives.

In the ancient and mystical land of Muirwood, Lia has known only a life of servitude. Labeled a “wretched”, an outcast unwanted and unworthy of respect, Lia is forbidden to realize her dream to read or write. All but doomed, her days are spent toiling away as a kitchen slave under the charge of the Aldermaston, the Abbey’s watchful overseer. But when an injured squire named Colvin is abandoned at the kitchen’s doorstep, an opportunity arises.

When the emperor is assassinated, Sera Fitzempress is the noble most eligible to inherit the empire. Her upcoming marriage to the prince would cement her position. And as a champion for peace, Sera is the only promise of hope for staving off war between the worlds of Kingfountain and Muirwood. But standing between her and her enemies is just one devastating secret. Sera’s best friend, Cettie, a girl born of a lower class, has made a shattering discovery: her entire existence has been a lie.

Deep in the mountains lies a valley with a secret to immortality—Clairvaux—where the Queen Mother reigns supreme. Hidden within the cliffs and rocky paths and shrouded by waterfalls, the Gallows Tree grows immortal fruit. But only the loyal angel sworn can partake and live forever, weaving magic with grafting wands and bonding to animals to borrow their powers while balancing the good in all living things.

From the moment she was banished by her father, the king, Princess Maia journeyed to seek sanctuary at Muirwood Abbey, the epicenter of magic and good in the land. Now safe for the first time since her cruel abandonment, Maia must foster uneasy friendships with other girls training to be Ciphers: women who learn to read and engrave tomes of ancient power, despite the laws forbidding them to do so.

When banished Princess Maia is captured by her father and threatened with execution, it appears that all is lost...until the people rise in rebellion against their king. Suddenly, the cast-aside royal finds herself crowned the first Queen of Comoros. But enemies appear on all sides as her father's conniving supporters assemble a new army against the fledgling ruler.

Sent on an impossible mission by Kingfountain's ruler into the heart of the enemy's capital as two mighty kingdoms prepare for war, Ankarette Tryneowy must divine the location of a magical sword, perhaps their key to victory. What she finds is the truth - one she could never have foreseen.

Thealos Quickfellow, a Shae from the kingdom of Avisahn, has left his homeland to learn first hand of the threat of the Bandit Rebellion. His life is forever changed when he meets the mysterious Sleepwalker known as Jaerod. For Thealos himself is one of the keys that can open a door to a Silvan artifact which can tame the forbidden side of the Everoot.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. A brutal war of succession has plunged the court of Kingfountain into a power struggle between a charitable king who took the crown unlawfully and his ambitious rival, Devon Argentine. The balance of power between the two men hinges on the fate of a young boy ensnared in this courtly intrigue. A boy befittingly nicknamed Ransom.

Before she befriended a frightened young boy in the palace of Kingfountain, Ankarette Tryneowy grew up during the shattering civil war that raged between members of the Argentine family. This is the story of how the only daughter of a lawyer and a midwife became the famed Queen's Poisoner.

Bound by more than the search for a fantastical stolen tome, Eilean and Hoel plummet through the mirror gate into Leoneyis—a world on the brink of disaster as its sovereign’s reign begins to unravel. Enemies converge to destroy King Andrew, who has become headstrong and paranoid. His influence is undermined, and his kingdom is vulnerable. That’s what happens when a king is betrayed by a queen.

For now, the centuries-long war between mortalkind and the Aesir is quiet. Yet not over. With the coming of winter, a season in which the Aesir thrive, they will resurface. Only two people, united by magic, can stop them. But first they’ll have to survive more imminent threats to their lives. Robinson Hawksley is of the tragic belief that his beloved wife, McKenna, has perished in a sorcerer’s fire—just as he is about to ascend to the highest rank in the magic order of the Invisible College.

Rising from her humble beginnings as a lost orphan, Lia is summoned to be Muirwood Abbey’s protector and special guardian for Ellowyn Demont, the lost heir of the fallen kingdom of Pry-Ree. After the death of the ruthless king at the battle of Winterrowd, the great Aldermaston and Abbey leader calls on Lia to use her mystical talents to save Muirwood from two new threats—a vengeful queen accusing the Abbey of her husband’s death and a deadly plague threatening to destroy the land.