Prologue: Ordeal

The heavy thump and clang of the doors falling shut sounded oddly muffled in the dark. After that, the light disappeared completely, and the blackness was like a living thing: moving slowly inward, ever closer, suffocating him. He had, he considered, never much minded the dark, but this was more than dark. This was what it must feel like to be blind, to live in a world completely without light. No, it was even beyond that, for how could someone live like this, for all of their life,with out going completely mad? This kind of darkness... It should not have been possible outside of the Black God's realm.

He should have been able to see… For he could hear, could he not? The doors were slowly creaking open again, the sound echoing through the Chamber. And the faint, chill breeze from outside brushed against his face… Where was the light?

"He's failed." The voice was Lord Eddiard's, hushed and solemn. He could not see the training master, but he could imagine him: a tall shadow, his arms folded, his face grave. He's failed… The words, Alan realized, referred to him. He was the one who had failed, lying here blind on the floor of the Chamber of the Ordeal… Lying here dead, waiting for the Black God to come. And he was dead. He realized that now. Death was the price for the failure of his Ordeal, and somehow—he must have screamed, must have cried out or spoken in that dark time he could not remember—somehow, he had failed.

"I did not expect—even with the way he was… I did not see this happening to him. He was a good lad, if nothing else." Despite his words, Lord Eddiard sounded calm, unruffled, as if such a death were an everyday occurrence, regrettable but hardly of note. Of all of them, of all his tormenters, he had always admired Lord Ediardd, the epitome of chivalry, of knightliness… And if he had not liked the training master, he had respected him, at least. He would never have imagined hearing such a cold, uncaring response to… to Alan's own death! A sudden anger bubbled up within him, but it was forgotten in a instant.

"Gareth, you aren't—this isn't funny, Gareth, why must you play these jokes?" Another voice. One he knew well. Lianne. "He's not really… he's not really dead… He isn't!" She was, Alan was almost pleased to hear, on the verge of tears. But not really. Not ever. He did not want her to cry, even if she cried for him.

No, he wanted to say. I'm not dead, I haven't failed, please! I'm here still, and the Black God has not yet come, and he wanted to get up and stop Lianne's crying, and embrace her there—yes, in front of Gareth, in front of everybody! It was never real, he wanted to say, but he was not allowed to speak in the Chamber of the Ordeal. He could not speak… He blinked, and realized that he could move, could see—if only by a strange dim light that seemed to emanate from no place in particular. The voices, the cool air—gone. He was in the chamber still, and alive. Wonderfully, gloriously alive. This had all been a test, then, only a part of his Ordeal… And, he thought, shivering, the rest was still to come. The doors remained shut, and he remained alone.

The darkness grew colder, and, somehow, brighter, until he was on a field of snow and blood and dying men. A battle raged there in the field around him, and he stood very still, wondering where he was, and why he was here at all. "Milord Alan," someone said, from behind him, "What are our orders?" The men behind him were mounted, he realized, as was he. There was a great many of them, all knights that looked somehow familiar, that had trained with him as a page or squire, even some that were older than him, who had completed their Ordeals before he'd even arrived at the palace. "Milord Alan…" the man behind him said again, trying not to let his impatience show in his voice, and not succeeding. And Alan realized that he—that all of them—were looking to him, to Alan, to lead them, and that he…

A horse screamed, somewhere nearby, and suddenly he was fully there, aware of the battle and immersed in it. Of them men who were fighting all around him, the dying that lay on the ground, the shouts and screams of pain, the smell of blood and the biting, bitter cold of the air. "Milord…" Alan swallowed, and turned to look at the anxious man behind him, whose face showed the same fear that he felt himself. And I am to lead them…

He breathed in, a single shuddering breath. I can't do this… Men are dying here...! And yet more would die, if he simply stood here, frozen, a coward in the snow. They would be slaughtered, waiting for a command that never came… He raised his sword then, in a silent command to charge, and spurred his horse onward, and the darkness enveloped him again.

And he was in the Chamber once more, surrounded by darkness and that faint eerie light that he had noticed before. It seemed, then, that he was given time to reflect on his slight victory, for for several minutes, nothing happened. And then nothing continued to happen, and he thought, If it's over, then why isn't it… over? The doors did not open. The room was completely silent, but for the faint sound of his breathing. He was almost afraid to make any noise louder than that.

Hours passed. He sat down on the too-cold floor and shivered and hugged his knees and rocked back and forth and waited. And waited. And waited.

He wanted to scream. Gods, how he wanted to scream. But that was the one thing he could not do, and so he continued, simply, to… wait. Sometime in the perpetual almost-darkness he stood and began to search, blindly, for the door. There was nothing. He made a complete circuit of the room, his hands going over every inch of the walls, and found nothing. He could not scream aloud, but he screamed inside his head, and pretended he could hear his voice, louder than anything he'd ever heard before, and wondered if he was going mad. He'd thought, at first, that it was another test of some kind, but he gave up on that line of thinking soon enough. It simply went on too long. Had he, he wondered, broken the Chamber, somehow? Would they be telling stories about him for all the years to come? Once, the Chamber of the Ordeal was used to test squires before they were knighted, but a boy went into it one day, and never came out, so the Chamber isn't used anymore.

After a while, he started to beat the wall with his fists, over and over again until they bled, and then he continued to do so until he could almost see the bloodstains on the walls. Where were they? Someone would have had to have noticed that something was wrong long ago… Perhaps they had tried to open the doors and failed? Or had they simply… forgotten about him? Would he remain here until the next time a squire began his Ordeal, weeks from now, months from now? He would be starved by then, and far dead. Perhaps only his skeleton would remain, a grisly test, simply some part of the Ordeal. Knights were forbidden to speak of what they experienced here, so they would never know… Never know what had become of him, if they even remembered him at all. Lianne would remember him, of course. He took some comfort in that. But Lianne could hardly demand that the priests open the doors and let him out, could she? She wouldn't even be allowed near the Chamber, not now. He became resigned to the fact that he was going to die.

The light never changed. It was impossible to know how much time had gone by. Tears started to run down his face at one point, but no sound accompanied them, and he was quick to wipe them away, and keep his arm over his face so that no more could escape. It did not seem that he ever needed to sleep, nor did he become any more hungry or thirsty than he had been when he entered the Chamber. But he didn't let this give him any hope about his chances of survival. No doubt it was his own fear that kept him from needing these things.

Then, one day, the doors opened, and he stepped out, blinking, into the bright light.

Lord Eddiard said, simply, "Well done," and then left him alone, to walk back to his own room as if in a dream. Was he still in the Chamber, somehow? He didn't dare speak, in case that was the case, but how else was he to find out what had happened… Why it had taken so long for him to be let out… Whether it was all over, after all.

But after Eddiard, Lianne was the first person he saw, and he forgot all about his refusal to speak. "Lianne—gods. It's over, isn't it. How long have I been in there?"

"In…where?" she asked, confused. "You mean the Chamber? No longer than anyone else. You did it, Alan. You're a knight, now." He sucked in his breath. No longer than anyone else… So it had been only a test, then. Over now. All over. He'd done it. All over. He was a knight. "Oh, Alan…" He had failed to notice the strain in her voice, to realize that her face was tearstained, her eyes frantic.

"Lianne… What is it?" His stomach clenched suddenly into a knot that had nothing to do with the Chamber of the Ordeal.

"It's—it's happened," she said, in a small voice. "They've announced the betrothal. Officially, and there's no going back, there's no doing anything… They—" There was a sudden, fierce anger in her voice that he had heard only rarely before this moment. "The bastards announced it during your Ordeal, so you couldn't say anything about it. They all know about it, the entire court. I'm to wed Roald in three months' time." And it all shattered into a thousand pieces.