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Sollis would perform a series of moves they had to copy. If any of them got it wrong he made them run full pelt around the practice ground. At first they seemed to make a mistake at every attempt and they did a lot of running, but eventually they got it right more than they got it wrong.
    Sollis called an end when the sky began to darken and they returned to the dining hall for an evening meal of bread and milk. There was little talk; they were too tired. Barkus made a few jokes and Dentos told a story about another of his uncles but there was little interest. Following the meal Sollis forced them to run up the stairs to their room, lining them up, panting, drained, exhausted.
    “ Your first day in the Order is over,” he told them. “It is a rule of the Order that you can leave in the morning if you wish. It will only get harder from now on so think carefully.”
    He left them there, panting in the candle light, thinking of the morning.
    “ Do ye think they’ll give us eggs for breakfast?” Dentos wondered.
    Later, as Vaelin squirmed in his bed of straw he found he couldn’t sleep despite his exhaustion. Barkus was snoring but it wasn’t this that kept him awake. His head was full of the enormity of the change in his life over the course of a single day. His father had given him away, pushed him into this place of beatings and lessons in death. It was clear his father hated him, he was a reminder of his dead wife best kept out of sight. Well he could hate too, hate was easy, hate would fuel him if his mother’s love could not. Loyalty is our strength. He snorted a silent laugh of derision. Let loyalty be your strength, father. My hate for you will be mine.
    Someone was crying in the dark, shedding tears on their straw pillow. Was it Nortah? Dentos? Caenis? There was no way to tell. The sobs were a forlorn, deeply lonely counterpoint to the regular woodsaw rhythm of Barkus’s snoring. Vaelin wanted to cry too, wanted to shed tears and wallow in self-pity, but the tears wouldn’t come. He lay awake, restless, heart thumping so hard with alternate hatred and anger that he wondered if it would burst through his ribs. Panic made it beat even faster, sweat beaded his forehead and bathed his chest. It was terrible, unbearable, he had to get out, get away from this place…
    “ Vaelin. ”
    A voice. A word spoken in darkness. Clear and real and true. His racing heart slowed instantly as he sat up, eyes searching the shadowed room. There was no fear for he knew the voice. The voice of his mother. Her shade had come to him, come to offer comfort, come to save him.
    She didn’t come again, although he strained his ears for another hour, no further words were spoken. But he knew he had heard it. She had come.
    He settled back into the needle discomfort of the mattress, tiredness finally overtaking him. The sobs had ceased and even Barkus’s snores seemed softer. He drifted into a dreamless, untroubled sleep.
     
     

Chapter 2
     
    It was a year into his time in the Order when Vaelin first killed a man. A year of hard lessons imparted by hard masters, a year of punishing unending routine. They woke at the fifth hour and began with the sword, hours of swinging their wooden blades at the posts on the practice ground, trying to fend off Master Sollis’s attacks and copying the increasingly complicated sword scales he taught them. Vaelin continued to be most adept at parrying Sollis’s blows but the Master frequently found a way past his guard to send him bruised and frustrated to the dirt. The lesson of not allowing oneself to be fixed by his eyes had been well learnt but Sollis knew many other tricks.
    Feldrian was given over entirely to sword work but Ildrian was the day of the bow when Master Checkrin, a muscular, softly spoken Nilsaelin, had them loosing arrows at the butts with their boy sized strong-bows. “Rhythm, boys, it’s all in the rhythm,” he told them. “Notch, draw, loose… Notch, draw,