Storm Warning

At nine, he had been his father's apprentice; a horseboy and stable sweeper, and supremely content with his position and the world. He loved horses, loved everything about them, and looked forward to rising to take his father's job when he was old enough. He had three sisters, two older and one younger, to tease and torment as any small boy would, and a little brother who toddled after him at every opportunity with a look of adoration on his chubby face. There was always food enough on the table, and if it was plain fare, well, there were folk enough who had not even that, and he knew it even then. He had been happy as he was. He had not wanted any changes that he could not foresee.

By now he had seen enough of other families to know how idyllic, in many ways, his own had been. Both his parents were as ready to praise as to reprimand, and no matter what mischief he had been into, he could count on forgiveness following repentance. His Father was proud of him, and was teaching him everything he knew about horses and horseflesh. His world was full of things and people he loved; what more did any boy need?

There was only one cloud in all their lives—the annual Feast of the Children, when parents were ordered to bring their children to the Temple to be inspected by the Sun-priests. The examinations began when a child was five, and ended when he was thirteen. The Feast always brought suppressed terror to every parent in the town, but it was especially hard on Karal's father and mother, for both of them had had siblings who were taken away by the Priests, and were subsequently burned for the heresy of harboring 'witch-powers.' There was always the fear that one of their children might be taken—and worse still, might be given to the Fires. Even those who were not thrown to the Fires never saw their homes and families again, for that was the way of the Sun-priests. So it had 'always' been.

For four years, the Priests had passed Karal over, and his father and mother had begun to lose a little of their fear, at least for his sake, if not for the sake of his younger siblings. Even he began to feel a cocky certainty that the Feast would never mean more to him than an occasion to claim a double handful of spun-sugar Vkandis Flames from the Priest's servants when the inspection was over.

But then, the year he was nine, his world and his certainty shattered.

A new Priest came to the Feast; a new Priest in black robes, rather than red, a Priest who watched him with narrowed eyes—

—and claimed him for the Sunlord.

One moment he had been standing with the others in a neat line—the next, a heavy hand came down on his shoulder, and two servants seized him before he could react, ushering him into the Temple, pushing him past the altar into the rooms beyond, where the townsfolk were never permitted, only those belonging to the Temple.

He didn't remember much of that day, or even of the following week, which might have been due to shock, or to the potion the Priest gave him to drink when he launched into hysterical tantrums. He had been the only child chosen from his town, and there was no one else he knew to share his ordeal and his exile. He vaguely remembered a long ride inside a dark wagon, which paused now and again so that another blank-eyed, stranger-child could join him on the bench. No spun-sugar for him or for them; only a bitter cup, a long period of shadow-haunted daze, and then the awakening in a strange and hostile place—the so-called Children's Cloister, where he and the others would live and study until they were accepted as novices or given duties as Servants.

Or until someone said they had witch-powers. He shuddered, cold creeping over him for a moment, as if the sun had lost its power to warm him.

In time, Karal came to accept what he could not change. He was told that he would never see his family again; that he was reborn into a new and greater family, the Kin of Vkandis.

They allowed him time to rebel, one chance to attempt to run away. This was unsuccessful, as were all such attempts as far as he ever learned. A terrible creature of flame caught him at the gate, and chased him back to the Cloister. He never made a second attempt, though he heard that others did; he resigned himself to his fate.

Then began the lessons, hour after hour of them.

Most of the children did not master much more than the barest skills of reading and writing; those were sent, at ten, to become Servants. Some, a fraction of the rest, were taken off by the Priests for 'special training' that had nothing to do with scholarly pursuits.

Some few of those were given to the Flames, later, as witches. Karal and the rest were required to attend the burnings, and he was told that the ashes were returned to their families as a mark of the disgrace to their bloodline. The three burnings he had witnessed still gave him nightmares.

For some reason, Karal did well in scholastic pursuits and did not again attract the attention of those who meted out 'special training.' He found a pure pleasure in learning that was as great as his pleasure in anything he had ever experienced. He soon outstripped most of the others who had originally been 'collected for Vkandis' with him. This gained him admission to another group of young pupils—the offspring of nobles and the well-to-do, sent as their parents' tithe to Vkandis, children who had the advantage of tutoring from an early age. These had never before been forced to share teachers or quarters with those of the lower classes... they resented this new development in their lives, and needed someone to take their displeasure out on.

And that had opened him to a new series of torments—not overt, but covert. He pleased his teachers, and the young nobles could not cause him trouble in his classes, but outside those classes, he was fair game for any prank they could invent that would not call down the wrath of their Keeper on them.

He shook his head, driving away the unpleasant memories for now. None of that mattered, then