The training yard of the Lord Protector's palace was not like the training yards of the Guilds or the Academy. It was older, and there were many mysteries inlaid in its stones.
Usually, it was filled with the cries of men and women, but for the last few months, a section of the training yard was left alone for a single person to use.
There were no spectators here, no benches for the old soldiers to watch, no galleries for the young nobles to preen. There was only stone, and steel, and for today, the men that were waiting in the pit at the center of the yard.
The pit was twenty feet deep, fifty feet across, with smooth walls and sanded floors, and yet it was impossible to hide the fact that so much blood had been spilled inside this pit that it had turned the walls, which were as hard as profound iron, black.
Tarian Arathor stood at the edge of the pit, watching the five figures who waited below. They were Amber Exiles, every one of them.
