I thought my readers might like to see a little of what I’ve been working on lately: the third and final part of The Lord’s Tale.
(Disclaimer: This is a raw part of a rough draft. It has not been edited. It may not appear in the final version. If it does, it may look very different than how it appears here.)
This is from a scene where Vyomsi Teranasin, one of the antagonists of the series, is trying to learn a spell. Ishia, now no longer officially one of the Dogs, is trying to help him. But he only allows so much help.
In an attempt to keep her from focusing too much on his struggle, he asks the following question…
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“Have you ever felt Ornic magic?” he asked Ishia, trying to sound better than he was.
“I felt what the Ornic did when he escaped the castle in Hurush.”
“No, no. I mean felt it coursing through you, as if you were the riverbed and the magic was the water.” He closed his eyes, trying to hold onto his thoughts. “The so-called ‘Fire of Choosing’ is like that, you know. No one warns you because no one knows. They know it’s Ornic, they know there’s an Ornic spell in it that chooses the next ruler, and they know that whomever it chooses will become bound to the law of the land. A fail-safe, I suppose, though why Ornic, I don’t know.” He put his hands on his knee, preparing himself. “And because they don’t know, they tell you to sit on the king’s throne and they stand there like vultures waiting to see if you’ll die or live, eyes bright and smiles tense because they don’t know. All they see is a change. So you sit, and the chair locks you in ’til you can’t move. The spell begins at your head, rushing over you with a strength that makes you feel as if you are, piece by piece, being stripped. Broken apart. Magic filling you and breaking you and you find in that moment that you want to be broken, no matter how terrifying. And in your head is an image of a great, burning wheel, but the fire is like nothing you’ve ever seen and it doesn’t act like fire. It acts like some living creature that dwells along the edge of that rolling wheel, dancing and swaying and living. And in that moment, when you see the wheel, in a way that defies all logic, you know that that is power, that that is what you want and a part of you wants nothing more than to ride the path of that wheel into eternity.”
Vyomsi got to his feet. “And then it’s gone. The vision disappears. The magic leaves. The power leaves. And you’re weak in front of the vultures, the jackals, the grinning nobles who have no idea what true power is and how helpless we are before it. And yet you’re expected to get up, to smile at the ignorant who will say how glad they are that the throne chose you. And you realize in that moment just how stupid they are. They think the throne chooses. No. The throne is a warning.”
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Amy Keeley 