Free Leaves of Flame by Benjamin Tate Page A

main entrance, acolytes pulling open the doors as they approached. Gusts of winter air pushed through, and Colin hoped that the acolytes had thought to include warmer clothes in his own set of supplies. Even as he thought it, one of the acolytes stepped forward and presented him with a second satchel. Inside, he found clothing of an Alvritshai cut and the Order’s colors, a bedroll, bowls and utensils, and other assorted tools for the road.
    He pulled the clothing free. “I’ll need to change,” he said to Vaeren and Lotaern.
    The Chosen motioned him away. As the acolyte showed him to a room, he and Vaeren spoke to each other quietly, too low for Colin to catch.
    A few minutes later, he joined the Order of the Flame outside in the Sanctuary’s plaza, the stone obelisks surrounding them on all sides. The Alvritshai clothing fit, even though Colin fidgeted with its unfamiliar cut, a little too tight in the shoulders for his taste.
    Lotaern had just finished a blessing, the Flame members rising. He turned to Colin as they mounted the waiting horses. “Find out what’s causing the storms, Shaeveran.”
    Colin didn’t answer the command, merely swinging upinto the saddle of his own horse. He remembered when the Alvritshai had been afraid of horses, when he and his family had first ventured onto the plains and met Aeren and Eraeth.
    The Chosen backed away, his acolytes following him into the protection of the door’s alcove, away from the wind.
    “Why are we leaving in the middle of the night?” one of the brothers asked, barely above a whisper. “Couldn’t this have waited until morning?”
    The other brother shrugged.
    Colin turned to Vaeren.
    “Where to first?” the caitan asked. “Rhyssal House lands to see Lord Aeren?”
    “No,” Colin said. “To the Winter Tree. I need to verify that the Trees have not been affected.”
    Vaeren’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but he nodded.

    They wound their way through the darkened streets of Caercaern, lit sparsely by lanterns or candlelight from high windows, Colin tugging the sleeves of his shirt down over his hands against the chill. Vaeren took the lead with Siobhaen, the two brothers trailing behind. Only a few Alvritshai were out at this hour, hurrying from one spot of warmth to another, bundled up and hunched into their clothes. No one paid them any attention. Most windows were dark, but a few of the shops they passed, mostly bakeries by the strong smell of bread that drifted from them, showed chinks of lantern light. In a few hours, the streets would be bustling with the thousands of Alvritshai that lived in the city, thronged with pull-­carts and wagons, the citizens dressed in the loose clothing and conical straw hats of commoners. He glanced toward the third tier, where most of the lords kept their own houses when the Evant was in session, then higher to where the Tamaell resided in the highest of the tiers, towering over the city, but the buildings were lost inthe darkness. Then he turned his attention south. The storm he had seen from the top of the Sanctuary had moved too far away to be visible.
    Ahead, Vaeren and Siobhaen slowed and he shifted in his saddle, looking up to where the Winter Tree towered above them. They’d reached the wall that surrounded it, had stopped at one of the gates. Vaeren spoke to the Warden who responded to his knock on the heavy wooden door.
    The door opened and they ducked through the stone arc of the wall into what had once been Caercaern’s largest marketplace.
    Colin remembered what the plaza had looked like the first time he’d been here with Aeren and Eraeth. It had stretched nearly the entire width of the tier, had been twice as long, the colonnades of the Hall of the Evant on the far side appearing distant. And it had been packed with people, tents, wagons tilted onto their sides, blankets spread onto the wide flagstones, and tables of every variety of produce and goods imaginable. It had taken Aeren and his escort