Deathmagus! Okay, I know that doesn't have much of a ring to it. But it's a working title, I assure you: and if there is a publishing house out there that can suggest a better one, I am all ears.
I won't lie to you: this is pretty transparently revenge fiction. Which is not necessarily a bad thing — Elron wrote a shitload of unflinchingly revengeful books, and they did well enough to found a religion. My ambitions are far lower, dear reader: to
Let me tell you about my character.
So the plot, or premise, or genre, or setting, or all of them at once is this: a young man, third son of a minor noble, is given a choice — the priesthood, or a far-off and rather disreputable school of magic, a place called Kingsguild (which, in its heyday, was in fact the headquarters of a thaumaturgical guild chartered by the Horned King (more about him later)). Milesos (for that is our hero's name) picks Kingsguild in a totally uninformed decision, and in six weeks he's packed off through rolling, flinty hills to this rambling keep dozens of leagues from anywhere.
Kingsguild is no longer in its heyday. It's just this side of a ruin: and where once it may have been a place of light and learning, it's now home to a very motley collection of magi, who (sadly enough) represent the best of the best among extant (legitimately chartered) sorcerers. One's a rapist, another an alcoholic, a third mad as a sunbathing bat.
I mention here that everyone I've talked about the novel to, at this point, exclaims "Hogwarts!" or something to that effect. While I enjoyed the Potter books as much as any other fellow who cut his teeth on AD&D and Edgar Rice Burroughs, it pains me to think that the first image that comes to mind is the goofy-scary-but-essentially-harmless academy that M. Potter has the honor of attending. In fact, Kingsguild is not modeled on the British education system — it's more like college. It's a place where you can do whatever you like, basically. Drink all night? Skip classes? Summon demons? Who will stop you? No one, really, until you piss off the Archmage who runs the place and he turns you into a whirling column of fire, and the drunk, fat old Healer has to reconstitute you from ashes in a lengthy and excruciating process. Hogwarts will enchant you: Kingsguild might kill you.
No one wants a laundry list of what Milesos did on his first day at school, and his second, and on and on ad nauseam. I don't want to write it any more than you want to read it. So instead the story's told (from first-person — I can't help it, I ran too many roleplaying games and read too much Haldeman) as a memoir or narrative of current events, intercut with flashbacks or scenes from Kingsguild that remind Our Hero of something happening now.
That's the nutshell version. I'll talk more about the difficulties and the sticky points and the two or three sentences I like in a near-future post. I will also attach a sample chapter or two so (as Tom and Ray say) the three members of my audience can read them and laugh, weep, or sigh as appropriate.
For now, dear reader, I remain–
Dr. Madu
PS I prescribe a gin and tonic for myself, and one for you. Go watch a movie or something while you're at it.
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