IN THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED, there were no signs or rumors of any daydrakes near Norgard, but a steady string of reports came in of sightings and attacks in the west and north. Some half dozen caravans had been attacked on the southwestern roads, and in Thace, many of the farmers were too frightened to venture out, leaving crops and herds untended. The city leaders feared the coming winter and what would happen if this new menace wasn’t stopped soon.
Corwin read each report desperately wishing he could do something to help—if only they’d captured the culprits in the woods. Even worse was that the reports themselves only served to deepen the mystery. Every time word of a new attack or sighting came in, Corwin marked the place on a map he kept in his chambers. He hoped to uncover a pattern, but so far there seemed to be none. If he hadn’t seen those drakes in that pit, it would be impossible to believe there was someone controlling them, considering the vast scope and randomness of the sightings. Either that or our foes are both widespread and powerful. A disturbing thought.
But it wasn’t one he had much time to dwell on, with the first uror trial looming. The morning it was due to start, Corwin sat alone at the desk in his room, reading his grandfather’s journal, which Minister Rendborne had given him. He wasn’t sure why he bothered given how maddeningly vague it was on the details. Borwin Tormane seemed far more interested in capturing his thoughts and feelings than offering advice for posterity. If anything, Borwin’s account only served to rattle Corwin’s already uncertain confidence.
When the first trial began, my brothers and I mounted the steps of Goddess Tor, all the way to the altar itself. Although we arrived together, I was separated from them the moment I stepped onto the stone. What happened next I cannot describe. I must not. But the test was greater than any I had ever faced before or even dared imagine. And yet the aftermath of it proved hardest of all, when they brought my brother Jorwen’s body down from the altar, broken from the inside.
The broken bit, Corwin knew, was his great-uncle’s heart, which had given out during the trial. Whatever it involved had exposed this fundamental weakness inside him. Corwin placed his palm against his chest, feeling each steady beat beneath, strong and sure. There is no such weakness in me, he told himself. Then again, perhaps Jorwen had felt the same before going into the trial. But no, Corwin suspected his own weaknesses lay elsewhere.
Fatigued by so much reading, he idly turned the pages until he reached the end, where his grandfather had put down his thoughts on winning the trial. Interested despite himself, Corwin read:
I felt it before I knew it. A sense of power and completeness I had never known before or since. The mark on my palm grew warm and began to glow. Like fire. Like the sun. Then all of Norgard knew as I did—that I was to be the next king.
Corwin glanced at his own uror mark, the raised red flesh still tender and sore despite the work the green robes had done on it the day before to accelerate the healing process. The high priestess told him he should be grateful, that normally the uror mark was left to heal on its own, but with the need to start the trials quickly, they had decided to allow magists to assist. I am to be whole in body when I enter the trial today. Corwin closed his fingers, hiding the mark.
Returning his gaze to the chronicle, he read the next paragraph.
But the greatest surprise, even more than winning and the lighting of the mark, is the uror sign itself. The bear has changed toward me and I toward it. Toward her. Jahara is her name. And I can hear her thoughts as she can hear mine. We are bonded now, as surely as Noralah with Niran and Nelek.
Corwin read the last sentence several times, trying to make sense of it. Was his grandfather being poetical? He did have that tendency, and yet there was nothing flowery about this prose. Just these simple sentences presented as fact.
Leaning back in his chair, Corwin traced his thumb over the scar on his chin. In the other accounts he’d read, and indeed in every lesson he’d attended about the uror trials, there’d been no mention of this . . . goddess gift? He didn’t know what to call it. It sounded like magic, like the wilder Ralph Marcel and his influence over animals.
With doubt churning in his mind, Corwin pictured his father’s uror sign. The wolf called Murr had died when Corwin was just a boy. Still, he remembered his father’s sadness over it, the way he mourned for weeks on end. Come to think of it, the relationship between them did have mystical properties. How else could you explain a tame wolf? Murr had followed his father everywhere, always at his side, like a shadow with teeth.
If only I could ask him about it now, Corwin thought. But there wasn’t any point dwelling on what would never be. Even if he’d been allowed to ask, his father couldn’t have answered.
A knock sounded on the door, and Corwin closed the journal before answering it. The priestess waiting beyond bowed her head, then motioned for him to follow. It was time for the trial to begin.
With his back rigid, Corwin stepped out into the corridor and pulled the door closed behind him. He’d been instructed to bring nothing with him, no armor, no weapons, only himself. Feeling surprisingly calm now that he was moving, he followed the priestess down to the courtyard, where a carriage waited. Edwin already sat inside it when Corwin entered. His brother acknowledged him with a single nod, then turned his gaze out the window.
Sitting down beside him, Corwin did the same, watching as the carriage left the courtyard for the city. People lined the streets, cheering as they passed. Before long they headed through the southern gates and out onto the open countryside beyond. Corwin caught a glimpse in the distance of Goddess Tor rising up from the fields, the craggy hill a massive green tower.
When the carriage pulled to a stop some time later, Corwin climbed out first, followed by Edwin. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they both looked up at the steep, ragged stone steps carved into the hill before them. The Steps of Sorrows, they were called. The priestess who’d fetched Corwin from the castle headed up first, motioning for the princes to follow.
The climb proved long and arduous, a trial itself. The bright sun, unfettered by any clouds, bore down on them with relentless heat. Halfway through the climb, Corwin paused to wipe sweat from his brow and ease the ache in his legs. He glanced beneath him, taking in the sight of all the people assembled at the base of Goddess Tor, hundreds of peasants present for the trial. They wouldn’t be able to see anything of what happened from so far away, but they would hear about it quickly.
Reaching the top at last, Corwin drew a deep breath and willed his heartbeat to slow. Easily a hundred more people had gathered up here on the wide plateau, noblemen and courtiers all. Dead center on the plateau sat the Asterion, the altar of the goddess. The massive stone table rested atop a dozen pillars, each one engraved with ancient symbols.
A canopy tent had been pitched not far from the altar stairs, with two smaller walled tents just outside of it. The high priestess, the grand master, and all the high council stood beneath the canopy, watching the princes as they approached. Corwin ran his gaze over the crowd, searching for Dal. To his surprise, he spotted him nearly at once. Even more surprising was that Signe, Bonner, and Kate were with him. I wonder who he had to bribe to make that happen. But however it was done, Corwin was glad to have familiar faces here. Kate smiled at him, and the gesture seemed to push air into his lungs. He wished he could talk to her, but instead he was ushered inside one of the walled tents, where two more priestesses waited.