Standalone Fantasy - powerful magician, doesn't like their power, plays beautiful music, fights an empire

[Chris]

Thanks for taking the time to read/help, this is an off/on search over many years that I've never resolved.

Read this book around 1999-2002 when I was at the height of my voracious teenage reading. It's a STANDALONE book set in a world with magic and an empire, sword and such. It was one of many books rented from the local library (Northern Ireland). Given my difficulty in finding it I'm guessing at a more obscure author but I could be wrong...

Basic info:
-Really powerful magical child - grows up through the story
-Plays music which he imbues with magic (lute possibly but unsure)
-Pretty sure he could teleport
-He doesn't like his magic, wants to be normal
-There's an empire/emperor who is tyrannical, slavery etc
-Some form of shackles/chains exist that can prevent magic use

SPOILER - I'm certain this bit happens and it is my defining memory of the book
(view spoiler)[ - main character dies in the end by capsizing a boat he is prisoner on, emperor is also onboard? heavy armour kills/drowns him?
(hide spoiler)]

Possible information but I might be confusing it with other books:
-born during a battle, it kills the fighting armies (or maybe destroys a city)
-the boy knows this and that's why he dislikes his magic
-his power comes from darkness (some kind of ritual?) but doesn't control him
(view spoiler)[ -female character at some point who poses as a courtesan to get close and attempt to kill the emperor as revenge for killing her sister? family? something along those lines (hide spoiler)]

Any help with this would be great, as I said it's been a sporadic search over many years. At this point I'd not be overly surprised if my teenage brain, spurred by prolific reading, had dreamed the outline of a fantasy book!

Thanks again

Chris

[Genesistrine]

The combination of unwanted teleportation and music makes me think of Phyllis Eisenstein's Alaric the Minstrel books (there are two, but it's possible you missed that, there's no overarching plot), Born to Exile and In the Red Lord's Reach. Is either a possibility?

[Chris]

I had a look through the summary of those 2 books and unfortunately the lack of magic outside the teleport ability rules them out. That said they sound intriguing so thank you for the tip, I'll add them to my reading list!

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

You started a thread for this already here:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

so I'm closing this thread. One thread per book, please.

In a few days we'll delete this thread.