We are thrilled to be sharing an excerpt from #1 New York Times bestselling author Kendare Blake’s upcoming novel Champion of Fate, which is the start of an epic duology that follows a young woman training to join a fabled order as she attempts to lead a hero to his critical first victory.
Releasing on September 19th and now available for pre-order, read on to discover an excerpt for a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it takes to become an Aristene! In it, our main character Reed undertakes a ritual that will allow her to share magic with her mentor for the duration of her Hero’s Trial. It also gives a glimpse of Ferreh, one of the Aristene elders, who is always enigmatic.
SYNOPSIS
Behind every great hero is an Aristene.
Aristene are mythical female warriors, part of a legendary order. Though heroes might be immortalized in stories, it’s the Aristene who guide them to victory. They are the Heromakers.
Ever since she was an orphan taken in by the order, Reed has wanted to be an Aristene. Now, as an initiate, just one challenge stands in her way: she must shepherd her first hero to glory on the battlefield. Succeed, and Reed will take her place beside her sisters. Fail, and she’ll be cast from the only home she’s ever known.
Nothing is going to stop Reed–until she meets her hero, Hestion, a fiery and infuriating warrior. What begins as an alliance becomes more, and as secrets of the order come to light Reed begins to understand what becoming an Aristene may truly cost. Battle looming, she must choose: the order and the life she had planned, or Hestion, and the one she never expected.
EXCERPT
Magic in the Blood
Reed followed Aster through the curving halls, up one staircase and down another. It didn’t take her long to become completely lost. Some things in Atropa had seemed smaller than it had in her memories, but not the Citadel. The Citadel would never be anything but enormous and unknowable.
When they reached the darker corridors, Aster took a torch from the wall to light their way. Reed glanced back and saw that it was replaced almost instantly, the acolyte there and gone like a ghost. She couldn’t imagine being so aware, knowing the inner goings-on of the Citadel well enough to be precisely where she was needed at precisely the right moment. Yet the acolytes managed it without a drop of the goddess’ magic. They were not immortal–some even returned to the regular world after their time of service. But most lived and died as citizens of Atropa. Reed didn’t know where they came from, or how they came to be devotees. Perhaps they came from the Summer Camp, or another of the Aristene strongholds–
“Are any of the acolytes failed initiates?” she asked suddenly.
“A few initiates who did not join the order have chosen to spend their years in service,” Aster replied. “But not many.”
At the end of a long hall, Aster stopped before a door of dark wood, strengthened by fat bands of iron. Yellow light emanated from beneath it and illuminated the tips of Reed’s toes.
“Inside this door you will take your first oaths, Reed. And I will give you a drop of my magic.”
“Your magic?” Reed asked.
“The sharing of magic between mentor and initiate maintains the bond between them during the separation of the trial. I will not always be with you, Reed. But through the bond of magic I will never be far.” She looked at Reed in the torchlight, and Reed swallowed. She should say that she was honored by that gift, that to be mentored by an Aristene as great as Aster was something she didn’t deserve. She should thank her for all she had done, the thousand small kindnesses over the years. Instead she nodded, and Aster opened the door.
Inside the room was close and quiet. Light from candles flickered upon the stone walls and made shadows of every curve and crevice, and as they walked past, the tiny flames moved with their breath and the movements of their bodies. Aside from the candles the room was mostly bare: there was only a small, circular table set in the center and draped in white cloth. It was set with many candles and held a cup of glazed clay pottery. Beside the cup rested a knife, the handle inset with red and green stones.
Reed knew the words to the vows she would take. Aster and the other mentors had tutored them, made them commit them to memory. She knew what Aster would say so well she could have said it all herself. Yet standing there in the low light, with the jewels in the knife handle glinting like eyes, Reed feared she would forget, and get it all wrong.
“Shouldn’t we begin?” Reed asked.
“Soon. We must wait for the elder.”
“The elder?”
“Either Ferreh or Tiern will come. We may have to wait a while, if they decided to administer Lyonene and Gretchen’s oaths before yours.”
But Reed was unsurprised when the door opened a few moments later, just as she was unsurprised to see that it was Ferreh who walked through it. The elder didn’t look quite the same as she had above, when they stood together before the stone statue of Emaleth. Now she wore full battle regalia, with a long sword strapped to her back across a studded shield, and knives strapped to her waist in leather sheaths. Her deep brown skin had been painted with white, swirling symbols at her wrists and throat, and her eyes above the candles looked through Reed as through a stranger, as if her fond words had been a figment of Reed’s imagination.
Ferreh positioned herself across the table from them.
“What do you wish?” the elder asked.
“To be an Aristene,” Reed replied smoothly. “To join the order and dine at the Citadel and send tribute to Kleia Gloria.” Beside her, Reed felt Aster relax. She remembered the words, and felt their weight, no longer mere phrases to be learned and regurgitated on command. The oaths were real now; her first before the goddess.
“To be an Aristene is to give up your mortal life,” said Ferreh. “And to be granted a new one. To be an Aristene is to forfeit everything else. You will have no husband. No children. Your bloodline will end. Do you understand?”
Reed’s jaw tightened as each supposed cost dropped from Ferreh’s lips. She had no use for a husband. And she was all that was left of her bloodline. There was no blood to go back to. The order was her bloodline now.
“My bloodline will end,” Reed said. “But I won’t.” She met Ferreh’s eyes. Did she really think that any of this could change her mind? Prices and consequences hung suspended in the future as blurry and distant as clouds in the sky. The order was her path. The order was everything.
“You will be strong and you will be fast. You will be a maker of destinies, shaping the rise and fall of kingdoms. What will you be?”
“An Aristene,” Reed said. “A servant of Kleia Gloria.”
“A servant?” Ferreh asked.
“A servant. Her will before my own.”
Ferreh took up the knife. She turned to Aster and pointed the tip at her chest.
“Aristene, will you accept the burden of this initiate, and watch over her during the Hero’s Trial?”
“I will.”
Aster held her arm out over the mouth of the clay cup and Ferreh slashed a fast cut between her wrist and elbow. It was deep, but not deep enough to scar a member of the order–Aster would heal in a matter of days. Her blood ran dark in the candlelight, falling into the cup.
Ferreh turned to Reed.
“Do you accept this offering of your mentor?”
“I do.”
Ferreh waited, and after a few breaths, reached out to gently tug Reed’s arm over the rim of the cup. Reed flushed. They hadn’t taught them what the magic-sharing ritual entailed, nothing past the oaths, but she should have known what to do. Lyonene had probably put her arm out so fast she had pushed Sabil’s away still bleeding.
Ferreh cut. The sting of the knife was sharp. She held Reed’s arm steady as the blood dripped down, then wrapped it in a bandage of white, careful to keep any blood from falling onto the tablecloth. The knife she had already set beside the cup–her cuts had been so fast that the blade hadn’t even been soiled.
Aster took up the cup and drank, and Reed’s stomach turned when she lowered it and saw her lips tinged red at the corners and shiny in the center.
“And now the initiate will drink,” Ferreh said.
Reed had tasted blood before, many times when she had taken a hit from Jana or Lyonene, or even Aster. But this was different. It wasn’t only her blood, and it wasn’t only blood–it had been mixed with some kind of oil and a fine dusting of chopped herbs. When it hit her tongue her throat locked and refused to swallow, so she took all of the blood into her mouth and held it puffed out in her cheeks, like the cheeks of the pale white fish they kept in the pond beside the north pasture. The taste was fatty and salty. Metallic. She wanted to retch, and sucked air through her nose. Finally, she swallowed hard. The mixture of blood reached her stomach and bobbed there a moment as if it were solid.
Ferreh smiled warmly, signaling that the ritual was at an end.
“You did well,” Aster said. “For a moment I thought you’d be sick, and we’d have to start all over again.”
“Is that what would have happened?” Reed asked. “We’d have just started over?”
“Of course.” Aster clapped her on the shoulder and went to open the door, but Ferreh put a hand on Reed’s arm.
“A moment with your initiate,” she said, and Aster bowed and left them alone. At the table, Ferreh took up a stone pitcher and poured water into the blood-stained clay cup. She swirled it out and tossed the liquid into the corner. Then she held her own wrist.
“Wait,” Reed said before the knife could bite into her skin. “I do not want this. I can do it on my own.”
Ferreh looked at Reed with calm brown eyes. “This is not for you, child. It is for the order.” She sliced fast and deep; her blood ran down in a ribbon of red. “Now,” she said, and held out the cup. “Drink.”
Reed hesitated. An elder’s blood. She didn’t need to be told that it was not commonly given.
“It will not tie me to you,” Ferreh said. “It is not like the tie between mentor and initiate, where both drink.”
“Then what will it do? Why am I being given this?”
“Why do you question, the elder of your order?” Ferreh asked.
Reed took the cup. But she couldn’t bring it to her lips, and the elder sighed.
“Something is coming, Reed. That may threaten us all.” Ferreh stepped closer, her voice low. “Three initiates is uncommon. A foundling girl is uncommon. And the movements of men have become uncommon. Tonight we send three initiates into the world for more than their Hero’s Trials. I do not wish to ask an initiate for this kind of faith. But for the order I will ask it.”
“Will you ask the same of the others? Lyonene is the fastest, the cleverest, if the order has need–”
“Lyonene was not the one I saw in the waters of the well. She was not the one delivered to us in the night, shrouded by death and blood.”
“I don’t understand, elder,” Reed said. But Ferreh said no more. She was the mind, as they called her. She was the leader.
Reed tipped the cup back and drank until it was empty.
