She approached Edwin first. “Hold out your right hand, firstborn son of Tormane.” Edwin did as she bade, and the high priestess pressed the brand to his palm, searing it with a dreadful sizzling sound. Edwin flinched but he didn’t scream, not even when the smell of his own burning flesh filled the temple. Watching and waiting his turn, Corwin felt the sweat break out on his body. He thought he might vomit if he opened his mouth.
When she finished with Edwin, the high priestess returned the brand to the fire, heating it once more. Corwin counted all the breaths he took, forcing them to be deep and slow. I will not flinch. I will not scream. He widened his stance and held out his hand when the high priestess approached him. She jammed the glowing tip against his palm, and he clenched his teeth to keep from crying out. The pain tore through him like something alive and ravenous. His legs went weak, heart hammering against his breastbone. Nausea clenched his stomach and climbed his throat, and he swallowed back bile.
It was over in a moment, but the pain seemed like it would never end. He wrapped the fingers of his left hand around his right wrist, trying to squeeze the sensation off like a tourniquet. He couldn’t open the palm on his injured hand, but he knew the skin beneath was blistered in the shape of the brand—a wheel with eight spokes set inside the holy triangle. The symbol of choice and of fate.
The uror mark.
Praying it was almost over, Corwin forced himself to count his breaths again, his mind focused on something other than the pain. He felt Edwin’s gaze on him, judging his every reaction.
The priestess raised both her hands and said in a loud, ringing voice, “Bring forth the uror sign.”
For a moment nothing happened, but then Corwin heard it—the sound of hooves striking stone behind him. Was it a stag? A boar? But then the animal made a noise of the kind that Corwin had heard a thousand times before. A sound so familiar it wouldn’t have even registered to him if he were any other place besides the Temple of Noralah. But no. It couldn’t be.
Corwin turned and let his eyes behold the impossible.
The uror sign was a horse.
It was young, but not a foal, two years at least. Later he would learn that the colt simply appeared in a pasture a few weeks after he left on his peacekeeping tour. One half of his body was inky black, the other white as ivory. The shaded line dividing the two followed the length of his spine in a gray-colored dorsal stripe. A priestess held the colt by a halter and lead, the muscles in her arms taut from trying to keep control of the animal. The colt arched his neck and pranced sideways, snorting and tossing his head. His eyes rolled with skittish excitement, one pale blue and one black.
Corwin had never before beheld something so beautiful or terrifying. Tears burned his eyes at the sight of it, and fear rippled through his chest. He both loved and hated it. A horse. The uror sign is a horse!
He tried to force his mind to accept the truth but failed. There had been only one horse as an uror sign before, more than two hundred years ago during the War of Three, when the nightdrakes first appeared in Rime. It was a dark time, one of great turmoil and upheaval, and the goddess sent the most powerful and sacred of signs to hail the new king, a man strong enough to rally Norgard against the nightdrakes long enough for the wall to be built around the city.
And now the daydrakes have appeared, and the Rising is gaining strength, Corwin thought. Dark times had come again.
He bowed his head, unable to look upon the horse a moment longer. A voice whispered in his mind that he should just concede now and let the worthy brother win.
If only he could.
16
Kate
THE FIRST YEAR OF KATE’S exile from Norgard, she’d been plagued by homesickness. It would strike at random moments, triggered by a familiar smell or sound or a common phrase spoken by a stranger. Then all at once tears would prick her eyes and breathing would become a struggle. She’d dealt with it then the only way she knew how—by moving forward, staying busy. That was the best part of her work with the Relay; the pressure of the rides helped her outrun the ghosts. On the road, there was no one around to see her cry, and eventually the longing for home passed until she was certain she would never suffer it again.
But since returning to Norgard, her homesickness had returned worse than ever and with few ways to combat it. She didn’t understand how it could be so when the very home she longed for surrounded her now. Every piece of furniture, every painting and statue, every mark on the marble floor was familiar. Nothing had changed. It seemed since her father’s death, no one had wanted to inhabit the quarters of a traitor, not even long enough to clear it out. Then at last Kate understood that it wasn’t the physical space her heart wanted, but the past she could never return to.
It didn’t help that the present had become so tense as well. When she wasn’t being ambushed by memories of the past, her mind kept returning to the parting words Master Raith had spoken to her the day they arrived at the castle.
I know what you are.
He’d whispered it into her ear so no one could hear, then walked away without another glance. There’d been no sign or word from him since—nearly a week now. She couldn’t understand it. Why make the threat and never follow through with it? All she could think was that he was waiting for the right moment to reveal her secret, some opportunity that would best serve him in some way.
Or maybe it wasn’t a threat at all.
But no, she couldn’t believe that. Not from a magist. Not when she was a wilder—and he knows!
She was trapped. She couldn’t leave, not with Bonner and the task he faced of making the revolvers. He’d run into trouble already—the first molds he created cracked the moment one of the royal blacksmiths tried to use them. Kate had a feeling Bonner didn’t fully realize just how much he relied on his magic to accomplish what he did. Sometimes the magic was so instinctual, the wielder wasn’t even aware of using it. She feared things were only going to get worse. It was why she hadn’t told either him or Signe what Raith had said. Kate didn’t want them to panic and do something foolish, like try to get her to leave the country. I need more time to discover the truth about my father.
It was past time she got started.
Mustering her courage, Kate flipped back the sheets and climbed out of bed. She dressed quickly, knowing that if she hesitated even for a second, she might change her mind. She’d barely left her rooms these last few days, but today she would visit the royal stables. Surely there were still some of her father’s friends there, people who knew him well enough for him to have shared his secrets with them. Since he wasn’t sharing them with me.
Go to Fenmore. She still had no idea what it meant. But someone must. She hoped that Alaistar Cade might help. He was master of horse now, but for the first seventeen years of her life, Alaistar had been her father’s second—and her uncle by proxy. She had no other family, not counting her mother, who was never around enough to be counted. But she didn’t know what to expect from Alaistar now. On the day her father was executed, he’d been away on an expedition to Rhoswen in search of new horses to add to the bloodlines. Kate fled Norgard before his return. When she saw him in the courtyard the day of their arrival, he’d glanced at her several times, but always with a guarded expression.
Leaving her bedroom, she headed down the hall to the main room. The place was quiet, Signe still asleep after a late night out with Dal. For a moment as Kate passed her father’s study, a large ebony desk tucked in the far corner of the main room, she could almost see him out of the corner of her eye. With a hollow ache in her center, she headed through the door.