Excerpt: Linarath's Tears (working title)

It was a fine night for a murder.

Fierce winds were blowing over the city’s walls, stirring the last of autumn’s dead leaves in the streets. The wind had also blown in heavy black clouds that obscured the stars. Moonlight might have found a way through them, at least sporadically, but the moon was nothing but a tiny, infinitesimal sliver, barely there at all. Yes, if one was to murder someone, one would do it tonight.

Of course, the would-be murderer (who was standing on a terrace surveying the city) didn’t think of it as a murder; he thought of it as a political maneuver. Unfortunately, the whole rest of the world saw it as, pure, cold-blooded murder. Patricide, in fact. And, as the intended victim was the king whose palace happened to be in the city, it was regicide, too. The would-be murderer was himself a prince, Prince Dyrk of Scuratona. Do not be deceived: a prince he may have been, but a knight in shining armor he was not. He was the sort of child of whom, in our world, large aunts with purple umbrellas say, “That child will come to no good, mark my words!” In Dyrk’s world, the aunts did not have umbrellas, as that ingenious appliance had not been invented, but the principle was the thing. As Dyrk had gotten older, the aunts were alarmed by his nasty glares when they said this (like many of his countrymen, Dyrk had black eyes, and black eyes make for fearsome glaring power); so alarmed, in fact, that they had stopped saying it entirely. Dyrk, however, had come to no good. He had done the thing that all little children in his world were warned about: he had taught himself sorcery.

You must understand, dear reader, that in Dyrk’s world, everyone had a magical talent, from the highest king to the lowest peasant. Some were a little better at it than others, true, and the type of magic was different in each country, but regardless, everyone had some magic. Sorcery had been around as long as magic had (which is to say, forever), but was markedly different. Learning sorcery could give one’s magical power a boost. It could make one terrifyingly strong. But the problem was, sorcery, over time, corroded the very foundations of one’s magic. So when one studied sorcery, the more one learned, the less magic one had, causing one to lean more heavily on sorcery. When one became an adept at sorcery, one could not go back. And I’ve used the word ‘one’ nine times in the past five sentences. But I digress. The most important thing is, sorcery was dreadfully nasty. And Dyrk had got himself really and truly stuck in it. Because of this, he was no longer officially a prince. He was only a sorcerer. Which is why he was planning to kill his father: then no one could prove that he wasn’t the true king. He sighed and went back inside. Time to start. Dyrk was only twenty-seven, and should have been handsome, with his shoulder-length black hair and long, narrow features. Indeed, he still was handsome. But there was something creepy about his face, some emptiness in his eyes. There had been whispers about him since he was born: his mother, about whom little was known, was rumored a foreigner from Mettia, far across the sea. But those who saw him that night swore that his mother must have been from Karn on the Western coast.

“He looked spooked-like,” they said. “Like he knew what was to happen. Like he was a Karn-seer.”

But if Dyrk knew the imminent events of that night, it was because he intended to cause them. He walked to his father’s study, where the king could almost always be found.