The Magicians' Guild

Trudi Canavan published The Magicians' Guild in 2001, and it was the first of her Black Magician novels; The Novice followed in 2002 and The High Lord in 2003.

The city is Imardin, the capital of Kyralia, and every winter the magicians go through it clearing out the dwells, as the poor of the city are called. Young gang members gather to throw stones at them, and the magicians barely notice, since they are behind a shield of magic, until one stone goes through it and hurts a magician standing on the other side.

The thrower is Sonea, a girl from the slums, and she has no idea that what she has done is impossible. She goes into hiding from the guild, which needs to find her: her power is wild and untrained, and left alone it could kill her and destroy the city. The novel is as much about the magicians' difficulty in persuading her to trust them as it is about the hunt, since she has every reason to fear what they might do with her.