Something nitpicky: "Karrys smiled at the sight excited to be nearing her home." Phrased as it is, this sounds like something that should be coming from Karrys's point of view, not Garrick's.
I don't really see how the Rite of Eyes actually limits infighting; it seems to me that people would just find other excuses to fight. Which is fine, except that it sounds like Vardis believes it, which makes him seem kind of naive. If that's what you're going for, you can leave it. If it's not, you could handle it a couple of different ways: Make Vardis sound a bit sceptical about what he's saying, or perhaps add some religious decree as an incentive for people to actually follow the Rite, or something.
Actually, it seems to be that we could use this information much earlier, earlier than the Rite itself. (Or perhaps only hints of it, since then you'd run the risk of your readers feeling: Yes of course Garrick's chosen from the Rite.) I think the right bits of this information leaked earlier would help you in a couple of ways--it would keep the Rite from slapping your readers across the face, which it kind of did for me, and it would mean that you'd have to tell us less here. Because while your infodumps, if you want to call it that, are gracefully handled for the most part, there is a LOT of that going on in these chapters. A lot.
Before anyone calls me on the "for the most part" remark, yes, there was one paragraph here that bugged me, near the very beginning of this submission. "'The First Circle, Garrik,' Vardis said, 'was a group of monks led by the son of Kenja Laenrith: Dwy’o. Dwy’o gathered four other men, all morvade. Morvade is the drolo word for those who are most powerful at manipulating the Will..."
I think maybe this paragraph just sounded a little too pedantic, when really, Vardis doesn't strike me as a particularly pedantic character.
Honestly, selecting a new heir (new king?) every ten years doesn't sound like a very good way to lead to stability in a kingdom either.
While I kind of like Garrick knowing a bit about the judgement process of the crowning beforehand, as it gives him something else to be nervous about, I don't think you need to tell us about the actual process--gathering at Threecastle etcetera. It doesn't sound terribly complex, and I think I would rather just see it in action.
How old is Vardis, by the way?
We don't really know much about the Circles that Vardis and Garrick are talking about. They have something to do with the monks, but I don't know what their significance is beyond that...
At the same time, I kind of feel like we're getting TOO much information here--too much of it all at once. This whole chapter has basically been worldbuilding, worldbuilding, worldbuilding. As I said before, I think it's mostly well-handled... but I think we're just getting too much of it at once, and possibly too much of it explained to us. I'd rather see some of this stuff unfold through interacting with the world; right now the characters are just travelling through it. It's a bit like driving down the road in a foreign city with a tour guide, except all the windows are fogged up. You're not doing a bad job here, but I think you can do even better.
I'd say you should take this information and break it down into pieces - what needs to come later, what needs to come earlier, what needs to come in dialogue, and what can be revealed through action and interaction. (Or whatever other categories you need.) Then you can break it up however's necessary. Your readers will be able to pick up the pieces. (Big blocks of information like this are usually more for us than the reader, aren't they? I've done the same thing.)
"Karrys laughed at his words but her eyes belied the fact that she was hopeful that he did take the lessons to heart." This sentence read awkwardly to me. The actual conversation they had about gossip, particularly in relation to Garrick, made me chuckle though.
In the last sentence of this chapter, Garrick says something about the weight on his shoulders pressing down on him. I think this is the metaphorical weight you've been referring to in the last little while, but for some reason, something about the phrasing of the last line made it just a tad unclear for me.
Hey look, a critique that's actually not terribly late. Also, I talk too much.
