Science Fiction Book Search

Hey Everyone!

While I love this site purely for it's true appreciation of literature, and can thoroughly enjoy 1,000 page novels by Dickens, I recently remembered a book I read as a teenager that falls more into the science fiction/fantasy category. It is typical, of course, that I don't remember the Author, publisher, year or Title of this book, and that's where I'm hoping ya'll can come in. It was the first in a series and someone had left it where I worked as a waitress on graveyard shift at the time; I read it at work between tables and couldn't put it down. It was about a world that had overused and upset the balance of magic. There were machines that worked entirely from magic and had been used in many wars, but were disintegrating because magic had left the land. And then the hero of the story stumbles upon a young boy who has magic in him somehow. It's all about their journey to the battlefield of one of the last fights that the machines actually fought in. There are of course bad guys in the story, and they are the mages who are using the last of their magic to continue to destroy the world, and they are flying on some kind of animals towards this boy because they sensed him and want his magic. It's all extremely vague but I remember that in the end, the inexplicable happens and instead of being saved and having the 'good' people win, the 'bad' woman mage actually catches the boy and eats his brain to get his magic. I think there were two books after, but I never got to read them... so now that I'm remembering the story I'm really stuck in the lurch! Any help ANYONE can give me would be fantastic!