Please help, attempted to discover name of this book for years, what's it called?

[Kal]

Following is a book synopsis I've written up from memory, by chance could anyone tell me what the book was called, or who it was written by? I've been trying to find it again/find out what it was called for years now. Yet no one has ever seemed to know it by my description of storyline. Humbug

 

 

 

 

A world full of kingdoms ruled by normal kings/queens, with magic wielders used as advisors, there being a fair few witches in the general population of the world, as well as a few male sorcerers, their power basically their lifeforce, for witches as soon as they use it up they die, for the sorcerers at the point of death they'd latch onto the soul/lifeforce of a random human being elsewhere in the world, though they didn't actually know the particulars of who they were currently attached to/draining.

 

Main character the story was about was a young female witch, wanting to become a sorcerer herself though there were no female sorcerers, only males, no one else in the world but the sorcerers knows what's keeping themselves immortal, also the more a witch uses her powers, the sooner she dies. So the main character girl had previously been holding back from using her magic at all.

 

She apprentices herself to a sorcerer in hopes of becoming one, and he makes her do the exact opposite, use up all her power as quickly as possible, not telling her why, until she uses the last of her lifeforce and begins to die, in her death throes managing to latch onto another person's soul and become a sorcerer herself, the person in question turns out to be a prince of some powerful kingdom.

 

His father the king searches out sorcerers to find out what's wrong with him, to which they all pretend they don't know what's ailing him when he begins to fade/lose life as they don't want the secret to get out of how they continue to live, or it to be known that one of their kind is killing the heir.

 

There are some other storylines such as the various advisor sorcerers vying against each other, with old friendships/enmity between each other, considering normal people/kings as too far below their notice to become true enemies, simply being able to outlive them. One sorcerer put on a show of magical fireworks for his ruler using up his power in a wasteful display, burning out someone's life in the process, ending up having the feeling of a horde of the other sorcerers far away trying to attack him/stop him from gaining another host to draw life from, though he does manage to do so and they all back off again.

 

There is also a witch queen out somewhere out in the world who rules an island, who continues to look youthful herself for a hundred years or so, not from using her own power on herself, but rather visiting sorcerers heal her body to a look of youth each time they visit, and she keeps news/gossip of all the sorcerers herself. Kind of a go between for them all for gossip of everything going on with sorcerers. she has some kind of token of each of the sorcerers in a chest for some purpose or other.

Eventually this witch queen realises she only has a flicker of power/life left when trying to do a very minor spell and realising there's almost no life left in her, she'll soon lose it all, as such begins to think bitter thoughts.

 

No one knows the young girl witch has become a sorcerer except her teacher, so at one point in the book a random sorcerer provokes the girl into a minor battle atop a tower with gusting winds etc, thinking he's forcing a witch into using up her own lifeforce to try to match him when she responds, she bests the sorcerer by him suddenly running out of the person he's currently draining's lifeforce, he falls and dies, having failed to attach to another person's soul before hitting the ground.

 

The girl witch/sorcerer meets and discovers who she's draining, that it's the prince, every time she thinks of the fact she's killing him she almost loses grip on life herself/fades out, until she forces herself to want it more than caring about him again, during the course of the book she has sex with the prince at least once, can't recall if it was before or after discovering it's him she's draining.

 

At the very end of the book the girl disappears/escapes after fully draining the lifeforce of the prince, having killed him, showing she's managed to attach to another person despite now knowing the full implications of what hanging onto her own life is doing, unlike the first time.

[Argon9]

Oh My Dear... I've read the back blurb with that exact description some months back in a bookstore. I can't remember who wrote it or what it is called either. T.T I'm sorry that can't help you but I KNOW WHICH BOOK YOU SPEAK OF!