Kei felt the whole of the hall’s scorn fixed on him, waiting on his answer.

He pinched himself, half hoping it was some terrible dream. It was not. It was bare, naked reality.

He made up his mind and spoke.

" I have used no spell and no charm. I would not know how. I drank the blood from the flagon, and the pain took me under, and when I woke — before I could so much as look at myself — the door opened and I was brought out here. "

" Liar — throw him to the jungles — behead the bastard — "

Another wave of it came down on him, from the nobles and the commoners alike.

" Stop this instant. "

Lymic’s voice cut the hall to silence.

" Kaiser. When a Rakshasa wakes the beast-blood, the body is not the only thing that changes. He acquires a domain affinity — the thing that shapes what he will become — and that is what completes the true awakening. " He let the words settle. " The second part of the ceremony is where we read those affinities in the newly awakened and assign them to the training temples. No newly awakened adolescent is without one. You may change your face with a spell. You cannot counterfeit an affinity you were not given. "

His hooded gaze held on Kei.

" You had best be ready for what waits if you have lied. But for now — take a seat, anywhere on the first three floors. "

The dais sank back to the ground, and Kei climbed the stairs and found an empty spot off by itself on the first floor. From the first floor to the third sat the adolescents who had woken their bloodlines and waited now for the reading of their affinities.

" Guards. Prepare the stage for the affinity test. "

The voice was Cecil’s — another of the High Priests.

A black veil rose around the ground floor, twelve feet high and roofed over, and for a minute or two nothing of what happened behind it could be seen. Then the veil fell away.

The open floor was changed. It was glass now, a vast oval mirror laid flat across the ground. The circular dais was gone, and where it had stood there was a stand at the center of the glass, and on the stand a crystal skull. Seven chairs stood spaced around the oval, set apart from one another, with one gap left open where a stair led up onto the glass for the candidates.

" The stage is set. " Lymic’s voice went out across the amphitheater. " All rise, and welcome the Grand Clerics of the training temples. "

The whole hall stood. Kei stood with them — his curiosity about this world beginning, already, to outrun his fear of the test.

Black smoke bloomed in front of each of the seven chairs, and when it cleared the chairs were filled. Seven Grand Clerics, each in colored apparel, each in a hooded garb that hid the face.

The Grand Clerics were the heads of the training temples — the principals, each over the temple where the newly awakened were trained by their domain affinity. Each temple kept teachers of many origins, not Rakshasa alone, and under them the adolescents were trained up as far as grandmaster. The Grand Clerics themselves stood at the peak of the ancestor stage, each in his own domain.

There were seven temples. The Temple of Aquan. The Temple of Auran. The Temple of Ignan. The Temple of Terran. The Temple of Inmortui. The Temple of Bellicus. The Temple of Caedis. They were scattered across the whole of the Black Earth, each in its own place.

As the seven Grand Clerics settled, the Rakshasa on every floor took their seats again. And as Kei sat, he felt a pair of eyes on him.

He did not let it show that he knew. He looked, easily, toward the upper floors, as though nothing were on his mind — and out of the corner of his eye he found it. One of the hooded Grand Clerics, robed in dark purple, was watching him. Closely.

" Now , " Lymic’s voice rang out, " let us begin the second part of the awakening ceremony. Let the affinity tests begin. "