Terciel & Elinor

Bestselling novelist Garth Nix returns to the Old Kingdom for the never-before-told love story of Sabriel's parents, Terciel and Elinor, and the charter magic that brought them together-and threatened to tear them apart. A long-awaited prequel to a classic fantasy series. In the Old Kingdom, a land of ancient and often terrible magics, eighteen year-old orphan Terciel learns the art of necromancy from his great-aunt Tizanael.
But not to raise the Dead, rather to lay them to rest. He is the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, and Tizanael is the Abhorsen, the latest in a long line of people whose task it is to make sure the Dead do not return to Life. Across the Wall in Ancelstierre, a steam-age country where magic usually does not work, nineteen year-old Elinor lives a secluded life. Her only friends an old governess and an even older groom who was once a famous circus performer.
Her mother is a tyrant, who is feared by all despite her sickness and impending death .