The Orphan Princess

Two prophecies, one of a renaissance of magic, the other of destruction. One bringing people together, the other of the death of a city state. One now known as Lorynay Kyrryshy, the other known only as The Motherless Child. The first is obscure, almost forgotten. Unfortunately, the second is only too well remembered-especially in Suke The Great War had ended not in victory or stalemate, but in catastrophe. While true the Followers of the Light had lost their capital city Andgylym, those who followed the Flames had also lost much. The Nameless One had not been kind that day. In destroying the twelve ruling families of Suke, It ended the Line of Kings and scattered the Line of Queens, leaving only the vain, Twenty-Second Tier Sorceress Carisha on the throne. Indeed, only one other, world wide, had been left even that strong. A thousand years later, each queen would know when, and where, her heir was born. Known as the Orphan Princesses, each was told to kill the one whose mother died in childbirth.With time, even advanced knowledge of the magic known as the Grand Arcane became lost.The year is 1035, a little over a thousand years since the fall of Andgylym. For Queen Shu-luk, the power of the Grand Arcane is but legend. No one above the Nineteenth Tier still lives. And she hates the Princess Lorkiff, whose very life means the eventual end of the egotistical Shu-luk's reign. Would that she could become immortal, and kill her pesky heir On the other hand, Lorkiff dreams of rediscovering the lost magic of the Grand Arcane. Unlike Shu-luk, the young girl sees more to life than the debaucheries of Suke-the infighting and constant playing of one minor house against the other. She even dreams of reuniting those lost to the Light and making the world whole in following the Flames.What neither knows, however, is that Lorkiff's mother, a simple peasant woman, actually did die in childbirth And what has been forgotten in Suke is that the one known as Lorynay Kyrryshy-The Precious Beauty-carries a hidden, seen yet unseen, birthmark One that can only be seen by "seeing" what isn't there This makes Lorkiff the focus of not just one prophecy, but two Lorkiff must not only survive Shu-luk's conniving plots, but find her true self in the process-a task set against near impossible odds Originally partially published in Joan M. McCarty's Alternate Realities Webzine under the series title Reasons for Revenge. Reasons became one of the most visited archive pages during the last four years AR existed.