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 or now. I have to remember that. What mattered was that he had graduated into the ranks of the novices with high honors, despite the opposition of the other students, and when the time came to be taken by a mentor, he was selected by that same Black-robed Priest who had singled him out at the Feast of the Children.
Only now he knew what those ebony robes meant. His new mentor was a Priest-mage, a user of magic in Vkandis' name, and a summoner of demons.
He would have been terrified, if Ulrich hadn't immediately shown his kindly nature. And every morning since that day, he had offered up a paean of gratitude with his other prayers that it had been Ulrich who had chosen him. His Master had rank enough that not one of his fellow novices dared to torment him further, though they could, and did, shut him out socially.
Not that he cared. His Master was a scholar, and set him scholarly tasks that suited his nature. When his Master learned of his background and his love of horses, he suggested he find himself a mount early enough that the horses and mules were not all picked over. Ulrich made certain he had time out, every day, to spend at least a mark or two with his beloved gelding, Trenor. For a week or two, everything was well; he thought for certain that the future was again predictable.
He had already suffered two upheavals in his life—being torn from his family and being shoved, will-he, nill-he, into the ranks of those born far, far above his station. Now he suffered the third, but this time, the entire Kin of Vkandis "suffered" along with him.
Vkandis—the God Himself—selected a woman to be the Son of the Sun, in a fashion that brooked no denial of the validity of her claim to the position. That woman, High Priest Solaris, proceeded to set the entire established hierarchy on its side, declaring things that had been established orthodoxy for generations to be perversions of Vkandis' Word and Will.
And Ulrich not only approved, he was in the thick of it all, as one of Solaris' most trusted aides and assistants. So, perforce, was his protege.
Not that I was unhappy about that initially—not when one of the first things she did was to order that all novices and under-novices were to be permitted the same contact with their families that Army recruits had! Until that moment, no one taken by the Priests was ever permitted any contact with his family, even the most casual. Now he was able to write to them, even visit them twice a year, something that would have been unthinkable under the old Rules. In fact, when Solaris appointed Ulrich as her special envoy to Valdemar, she had taken the effort to order that Karal also take a week of special leave to see his family before he left with his Master. And when had a Son of the Sun ever concerned himself with something as trivial as the needs of a mere novice?
He stroked Trenor's neck soothingly, smiling to himself. The very first time he had gone home, the entire fortnight had been a wonderful visit. His mother had been so proud of him—and his father had been beside himself with pleasure. His son was secretary to a powerful Priest! His son was privy to all the secrets of the high and privileged! His son would see people and situations his father could only dream about.
But that had come later; no sooner had Solaris staged her internal revolution and he had returned from his first Familial Visit, than Karse acquired a new enemy, in the person of King Ancar of Hardorn. Ancar staged a major attack on the border; not in living memory had there been anything in the way of a concerted attack from Hardorn. The shock of the attack had reverberated throughout the entire country; to be honest, most Karsites were used to scoring small covert victories and raids against Hardorn and Valdemar, not having a concerted attack staged on their own borderlands.