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and bear the honour of the Order to places near and far.
    The number of youngsters presenting themselves before the mighty gates of Aldurukh had as much to do with his renown as it did the presence of the Lion. Zahariel remembered hearing the tales of him vanquishing the Blood Knights at the hearthfire on many a stormy evening. His father would always choose the darkest, most haunted nights to tell the tale, weaving a grisly tapestry of the horrors and debauched blood feasts of the knights to terrify his sons, before bringing the story to its heroic conclusion when Amadis defeated their leader in single combat.
    ‘It looks like everyone who’s anyone is here,’ said Nemiel, as they jostled for position among the stragglers in the topmost tier of the Circle Chamber. They elbowed past newly accepted novices and supplicants who had not served as long as they had. Grumbles followed them, but none dared gainsay a boy who had been part of the Order for longer. An unspoken, but wholly understood hierarchy operated within the Order, and its structure could not, ever, be broken.
    At last they found their proper place, further forward than the inferior supplicants and behind or beside those of a similar rank and stature. Though the centre of the Circle Chamber was some distance away, the view afforded from the upper tiers was second to none in terms of its panorama.
    The centre was empty, with a single throne-like chair set in the middle of the floor.
    ‘It looks like we made it in time,’ Zahariel noted, and Nemiel nodded.
    Banners hung from the chamber’s roof, and Zahariel felt a familiar wonder envelop him as he stared at them, reading the history of the Order in their pictorial representations of honour, valour and battle. Gold stitching crossed ceremonial standards of green and blue, and red-edged war banners outnumbered the ceremonial ones by quite some margin. The entire roof was hung with banners: so many that it seemed as though a great blanket had been spread across it, and then slashed into hanging squares.
    A hush fell upon the assembled novices, supplicants and knights at some unspoken signal, and Zahariel heard the creak of a wooden door opening, the metallic walk of a man in armour and the harsh rapping footsteps of metal on marble.
    He strained for a better look, finally seeing the man who had made him want to become a knight. One man marched to the centre of the chamber in the burnished plate armour of the Order.
    Zahariel tried not to feel disappointed at the warrior before him, but where he had expected a towering hero of legend, the equal of the Lion, he now saw that Brother Amadis was simply a man.
    He knew he should have expected no more, but to see the warrior who had lived in his heroic dreams for as long as he could remember as just a man of flesh and blood, who did not tower over them like some mighty leviathan of legend, was somehow less than he had hoped for.
    Yet, even as he tried to come to terms with the reality of seeing that his hero was, after all, just a man, he saw there was something indefinable to him. There was something in the way Amadis walked to the centre of the chamber, as though he owned it, the confidence he wore like a cloak, as though he understood that this gathering was just for him, and that it was his right and due.
    Despite what might have been perceived as monstrous arrogance, Zahariel could see a wry cast to Amadis’s features, as though he expected such a gathering, but found it faintly absurd that he should be held in such high regard.
    The more Zahariel looked at the figure in the centre of the chamber, the more he saw the easy confidence, the surety of purpose and the quiet courage in his every movement. Amadis held tight to the hilt of his sword as he walked, every inch a warrior, and Zahariel began to feel his admiration for this heroic knight grow with every passing second.
    Surrounded by knights of such stature and courage that it was an honour simply to be in the