The Sorcerers' Plague — David B. Coe

A Conflagration of Magic

Lici was a young girl when a deadly plague ran rampant through her village, leaving her the sole survivor. For sixty-four years she suffered silently, but before her life ends, she will wreak a terrible vengeance on the Y'Qatt, who had the power to save her village but chose not to do so. She could not have known that the religion of those Qirsi forbade them from using their magic: their fire, mists, shaping, healing . . .

Now Lici's vengeance sweeps across the Southlands, destroying Y'Qatt and other Qirsi villages overnight, killing nearly all the residents in violent, fiery conflagrations. Cursed by Lici's plague-spell, the infected Qirsi can't control their powers, unleashed in a holocaust of magic.

An old man from Lici's village who has discovered her terrible secret sets out to stop her before yet more people die. And Grinsa, a powerful Qirsi Weaver exiled from the Forelands, also seeks to stop the plague for his own reason: A Qirsi clan chief holds his wife and baby hostage. But every day more people are consumed in the conflagration that seems to spread faster than the wind, like an all-consuming angel of death. . . .