Risens’ eyes darted around the compact court, searching for the source of the new, unexpected voice. The cackle shifted into a tone of wild mirth at his failed investigation.

  “No, no, no, fledgling. That will never do,” the voice crowed.

  The flutter of winds flapped around the Raven’s Court as birds, first singly, then in pairs, alighted on the stone wall’s precipice. Intense stares of their beady eyes knifed through him, as if seeking out his very soul.

  His grip still firm on the pommels of his blades, he pivoted cautiously, scouring the interior of the forbidden shrine. He froze, his focus settling anew on the shire—the disturbing half-man, half-raven. A solitary bird was perched atop its head, though its attention wasn’t on him but something to the side of the peculiar statue.

  A shadow shifted, revealing a hunched figure stepping into the light.

  “Eyes without sight are without use,” it noted, though he was unsure if it was speaking to him or one of the birds. “Your vision must improve if you are to survive. Though your clumsiness and carelessness are likely to see you dead before the sun’s setting.”

  Risens hardened his gaze at the speaker. Whomever, or whatever it was, stood hidden beneath the cowl of a long, dark cloak. The fabric was unlike anything he’d ever seen. With a hint of an iridescent shine, it shifted in a prism of color as it captured stray rays of light. Unlike the uniform stitch of his clothing, it looked to be made of black, overlapping feathers. Whether a man or a woman filled the space between thick layers, he couldn’t tell, yet it bore the unmistakable hunch of age. A solitary clump of long, straight, grey hair escaped from beneath the shadow that concealed its face. He tracked the figure as it slowly moved around his side.

  The acidic retort flowed from his mouth unimpeded. None dared to insult the King’s Rightmaker. None who lived to tell the tale. “It was neither carelessness nor clumsiness that …” his voice, however, trailed off when he wheeled on the speaker to find himself once again alone in the chamber. The hostile notes of his growl echoed off slick, stone walls.

  “Ah, such anger at an honest assessment,” the individual noted. The voice now carried down from above, and he spun to find it perched on the corner of the pedestal that held the shrine. “Anger is often a revelation of guilt, though acceptance rarely follows such a strong response. It is no matter—a curse of youth. You have much to learn. You are here now. You have questions. Perhaps, in time, you will find the answers you seek.”

  The uncomfortable peculiarity of the situation was disturbing. Surrounded by dozens of ravens atop the wall, Risens conversed with a cryptic shadow that seemed to move without reason, as if it were multiple places at once. That he had questions was a perverse understatement. Even so, he felt his fingertips lighten from their grip on his blades.

  “I was called here,” he responded, even-keeled.

  “And you did not heed the call as requested.”

  “Who are you? What are you?”

  It sprang from the edge of the pedestal, landing gracefully on the cracked stone of the courtyard. Risens took a surprised step backward. The movements were nimble and silent. For one who’d worked exceedingly hard for a similar complement of skills, the appreciation was genuine. Its focus shifted from him to the blood stain on the ground by his feet.

  “How much of your blood marks this city, I wonder?” it pondered.

  Risens wasn’t sure if the rhetorical question served a purpose, so he left his mouth clamped shut.

  The figure raised its left arm, its eerie, eyeless gaze returning to his face. The bird atop the shrine let out a single shrill call as it flapped to the outstretched limb. With its other hand, the figure removed the cowl, revealing the wizened face of an elderly woman.

  She wore her wrinkles like laurels. And though her features were cracked with the ravages of time, she still retained traces of the obvious beauty she had held in youth. Her striking gaze pierced through him, though her eyes were devoid of emotion.

  “You may call me what you will, yet I am known in this court as Mother Raven.” She offered a slight nod. “As I have for the other fledglings, I am to be your guide.”

  Risens’ mind struggled as each influx of new details only filled him with more questions. That this was not the omniscient voice he had heard and felt reverberate through him, he was certain. Thankfully, though the responses had been cryptic, answers were now a possibility.

  “Others? Are there others like me?”

  “Others, of course,” she said, her voice matronly, though her attention remained on the preening raven that still perched on her arm. “To be but one when the flock awaits would be so utterly lonely and self-centered. It pains me to admit, it has been many, many years since the last. You, however, I believe, are unique.”

  Her head moved in quick, minute motions as if agreeing to a conversation he could not hear.

  “It is not our place,” she whispered. “He will understand once tempered from the fires within.”

  Her fingers gently rubbed the side of the bird’s face before it flapped its wings and took majestically to the sky, where it circled once before disappearing from the clearing above.

  Risens’ gaze followed, and when it returned, she was gone. He spun, terrified that she had left him before providing the guidance she had promised.

  Now, she sat, legs crossed at the side of the shrine. He had heard nothing, noted no moment, yet she had sifted positions by a matter of meters. The only hint she had previously stood before him was the single feather dithering softly to the marble. He bent, held out his hand, and watched it curiously as it settled on his palm. The black feather was velvety smooth. Its condition was perfect, unmarred. The individual barbs were without separation. Without giving it another second thought, he carefully gave it a home within the folds of his cloak.

  “Not all are as patient as I,” she said, her voice naught but a whisper. “Though they forget that they themselves once suffered from the inexperience of youth. You have done well to decipher the benefits of the Shadows Shroud without guidance. But what is to come is far more trying than maintaining your secrecy before a false king. There are scant results of a trial by fire—you either adapt or are reduced to ash.”

  “False king?” Risens asked, feeling anger rise within him at the proclamation.

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  “In time, my fledgling. In time.”

  Risens considered pushing the issue, but he worried his time with the old crone was short, and he needed answers.

  “Do you bear the mask as well?” he asked.

  Her words were preceded by a single cackle as if the question somehow carried the weight of comedy.

  “No.” She shook her head. “My words were not hyperbole. You, Risens of Windwake, are unique. Wearing the Shadows Shroud is an honor claimed by none other, though I am versed in its design and features.”

  She knew his name, though he had not given it. Who was this woman who called herself Mother?

  “You have guessed correctly,” she continued. “The symbols you see are, in fact, numbers—the countdown until it returns. Though it is a language long lost.”

  “Can its duration be extended? The master I serve is not forgiving of change,” he replied.

  The hilarity that once covered her turned rapidly into a chilling solemnity. The slits of her questioning eyes bore into him. “That is undeniable, though you misinterpret the truth. Your false king is but a man—one too scared to accept that he will never be anything more. Too frightened of the future that he hides from the past, covers his sins.”

  She was on her feet in an instant. Her footsteps made soft, yet noticeable scritches against the marble. She stopped before him, and Risens fought the urge to withdraw as her hand slowly reached out to his face. There was no sign of aggression in her motion or eyes. A slight pressure of her touched his cheek—her finger tracing the elegant designs on the gleaming mask.

  “Simple etchings, these are not.” Mother Raven’s hand moved to the other side of the mask. “Each elaborate rune has function and power beyond its design. As you’ve now undoubtedly guessed, you bear a strong resistance to most airborne toxins while you wear it, though I caution that you are not entirely immune. Additionally, it will allow you to breathe underwater for a short period, although this too has its limitations. As to the duration of its control, it is restricted only by your worth. Prove yourself, and its possibilities will grow without end.”

  An excited energy, the calming heat of hope swelled within him. He had been lucky to this point. Hiding the Shadows Shroud would grow exponentially more difficult with the tasks at hand.

  Her comment about the King—which would have typically been answered with the tip of his blade—elicited no such response. It was as if the honest truth of her words knifed through the illusion in his mind, and the palpable, anxious excitement of possibility struck his heart.

  “How do I prove myself? Justify my worth?”

  She stepped back at his question. Turning toward the shrine behind her, though her gaze swept across the stately birds watching from the wall above. She paused before it, reached the twisted features of the stone statue, then turned again to him.

  “Worth is proven through experience. Value through trials and your ability to adapt. Mastery will not come without sacrifice. This shrine, forgotten, forbidden, and scorned, will provide the answers to much you seek.”

  The eyes of the raven’s head—the awkward twisting of man and beast—stared knowingly at him. He had always felt a particular inexplicable draw to the shrine. Even though death was the price he’d pay if his actions were discovered. Still, he had sought it out with persistence. The voice that had commanded him, the one that he must heed, had been clear that this shrine no longer served a purpose to Risens. Why then would it hold any value?

  Its draw, the pull to it, was now insatiable.

  “The voice I heard, do you hear it too?” he asked.

  Mother Raven smiled, her countenance warm and kind. “I hear it and many others when they are directed to me, and sometimes when they are not.”

  “The voice… It said that this shrine was no longer mine, yet it gave me the Brand. One that is unknown to the Raven’s Guide,” he explained, tamping down the frustration at the continued ambiguity.

  “I heard as you did, though only one of us listened to the words,” she answered. “There is no untruth in the statement. This shrine was given a name. For generations, it was revered as the Shrine of the Appraiser. It will do no more for you.”

  Risens felt his gut twist at the statement. Receiving a Brand had been the one selfish desire that perpetually pervaded his thoughts. His life was a balance of duty and death, and he had accepted the calling. Yet a small sliver of him remained wild and unfulfilled.

  Until recently.

  Now, with the unexpected and unknown marking on his chest, the shrine that had drawn him to it for years would serve him no more. There was a certain innate cruelty to that thought.

  “The mark you bear upon your chest is known to only a few,” she croaked, her tone wavering between the gravelly quality of age and the shrill cries of a bird. “It is the Brand of the Avowal. It is one of many that you do not yet know. That it graces your skin denotes that you have already been judged and your potential deemed sufficient.

  “I meant what I said, as did he. This shrine was created for a solitary purpose. It has stood as the arbiter from its inception, and in you, that purpose has been fulfilled.”

  Without thinking, Risens raised his hand, placing it over the tome hidden within the folds of his cloak. He’d pored over the original document in the castle, digesting every word, every design. The confirmation that the Brand on his chest was indeed unrecorded by that manuscript, that it was one of many omitted from the pages, was as thrilling as it was perplexing.

  “If its purpose has been fulfilled, why do I still feel its call, feel the pull of it even now?” The questions blurted from his mouth—an overflow from the confusion in his mind. “What of the other Brands?”

  “So many questions, fledgling,” she cooed. “It is to the Raven’s Court that you feel the allure, the unquestioning force that draws you.”

  She took another step back from the Shrine of the Appraiser, though the tangent of her gaze remained affixed on its mysterious form. She unfolded her right arm as if ushering him toward the crouched agglomeration of man and bird.

  “That it holds no more purpose for you is certain, though it is far from alone.”

  As if directed by her words, the stone monument—the Shrine of the Appraiser—groaned. The intricately detailed wings that wrapped around the front of the figure parted, splaying out to either side, as it stood from where it had kneeled. Its eyes that had remained fixed on him lifted skyward, its head craning away as if its view was forbidden. In the space where the wings had covered, a void remained.

  The space was intriguing. The flat base met perpendicular uprights that reached head height before curving into a rounded top. The surface was black, deeper than the depths of the shadows and night that were his home, rippling with slight undulations of motion. The daylight streaming into the Raven’s Court failed to penetrate the darkness and was instead consumed by the shadow.

  The strength of the lure that had pulled him caused him to defy the king’s edict to stay away. One he knew the disobedience of would result in his death, blossomed into an unrelenting force. There were no hints of shapes within the inky darkness. Staring into it, he felt neither trepidation nor fear.

  “Where does it lead?” he whispered, the touch of reverence softening his voice.

  “To where you are meant to go,” she replied. “The path is yours to discover. Though I may be your guide, there are some places I cannot follow. I am forbidden to enter there, as are all… but you.”

  The sudden weight of her words crashed down on him. “Why me?”

  “It is not I who decides such things,” she said. “Now, go.”

  Risens took a step forward, then stopped. “What will I find inside?”

  “Answers. Shrine of the Raven.”

  Risens’ mind reeled with the possibilities. Brands were not uncommon, though having multiple was scarce. In the chronicled history of Halthome, only a few were known to have more than two Brands scarred into their skin. King Adalhard, the first, was one.

  “More unknown Brands can be found within?” he asked.

  “Just because you’ve never seen something, never read it in a book, does not mean it is unknown to all.” The spite in her tone was unexpected. “The tome you’ve studied, the Raven’s Guide, is incomplete by design. The Brands contained within its pages chronicle the paths walked by those without a true, defining purpose. They are coveted, yet trivial scribblings on skin when compared to those that harness true power. You bear the mark of one on your chest. Yet it is far from alone and far from complete.”

  The peculiarities continued to mount with every word that poured from her lips.

  “How do you know what Brands are inside if you’ve never entered?” He asked, though his view was focused on the wavering blackness before him.

  “Being forbidden is not the same as having never entered. If that were the case, you would not be standing in this forbidden court, would you, fledgling?”

  Risens took the rebuke with grace. “Understood.”

  “As for the truth of the Brands, I am certain, for I am the one who wrote them.”

  Risens snapped his head around, wheeling his body toward his cryptic guide.

  But Mother Raven was gone.

  Only the feather floating gently in the air was lingering proof of her presence.