Free Black Magic by Megan Derr Page A

just as soft and somber. "He must have known something, or was going to learn something soon. Come, we should see who has come and gone."
    "I must go tell the king," Sorin said dully. "We will have to tell the castle … everyone. Angelos, Alfrey … why would anyone want such good men dead?"
    Koray's mouth twisted. "Good men pose the biggest threat to those guilty of black deeds."
    Sorin closed his eyes, drew several deep breaths, then opened them again and went to do his duty.

Four
    Koray stared out at the rain that was turning the ward into a lake. Something was obviously not draining correctly, but the rain was coming down too hard and cold for anyone to be able to go out to locate and fix the problem. Letting the tapestry fall back into place, he returned to the table where his books and a pitcher of mulled wine patiently waited for him to get back to work. The constant draft weaving through the castle made the fire and his candles flicker as Koray once more took his seat.
    Two sentences into the tome he was studying, however, his mind started to wander again. Koray leaned back with a sigh and stared at the ceiling in frustration. He was supposed to be figuring out how to identify someone practicing demon magic, but all he could think about was Sorin.
    His head throbbed and he rubbed at his temples, feeling as though he were going to go mad from the frustration. The Goddess was pointing him to something , but he could not pinpoint what. He had crawled all over the castle and come up with nothing. The closest he had managed was the royal library, to which Sorin had easily granted him access.
    Sorin …
    Koray sighed softly, eyes falling from the ceiling to look around his bedroom. It was more than he had ever owned in his life—and 'own' was over-generous, but until he left he supposed it was more or less his. A bed that was the most comfortable thing he had ever felt in his life, a fireplace, a chest, a wardrobe; someone had installed shelves a few days ago that he might be able to safely store his books. The room was cleaned regularly, as were the clothes that seemed to rapidly increase in quantity.
    It was all quite disconcerting, but not nearly as disconcerting as the way everyone had started taking to calling him 'High Necromancer'. Koray had made his opinion of that quite clear, but Sorin had been frustratingly stubborn about it, the infuriating bastard. Koray scowled at his gleaming metal cup, then picked it up and drained the contents. The wine was sweet, fragrant, and sharp with mulling spices, warm in his gut.
    Unfortunately, it did nothing to banish thoughts of Sorin. Koray refilled his cup and stared broodingly at his book, letting his thoughts do as they wanted so that maybe his mind would tire itself out and he could go back to doing what he should.
    Thunder cracked, and he could see lightning even with the thick tapestry in place. The time of year was wrong for thunderstorms, and they had continued relentlessly for three days thus far. Koray could only take it as an ill omen and wonder morosely what it foretold.
    He drank more of his wine, then tried yet again to focus on his book. The letters were faded, hard to read—and some of them he hated to admit he could not read. Necromancers were trained as best could be managed, but Koray had been nothing, but another waif on the streets until a passing necromancer realized what he really was and had taken him in. He'd been … ten or so, by the best guess of Tomane, the man who had found and trained him.
    It was rather late to begin a boy in learning to read, and Koray rarely had time to improve the skill—and he certainly never had books with which to practice. But he would be damned if he asked anyone for help. If he had to hide away the primers he'd stumbled across, then so be it.
    Sighing when he realized he had lost the thread of the book again , Koray started reading it out loud to force himself to get on with it. Someone, somewhere in history had to