The Turncloak Mage
Chapter 1 Twenty-One Years Ago
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Twenty-One Years Ago
A baby was nestled at the foot of a gnarled wyrmwood, swaddled in a navy cloak and bound at the ankles with manacles of deminite.
He did not cry, but rather emanated a kind of bone-deep despair, a frequency that rendered surrounding wildlife meek, melancholic.
A waxen red moon hung proudly in the sky, like the mother of all things, but even she could not save him.
There was something badly wrong with the baby, but the baby did not yet understand this.
He thought only of the gnawing hunger in his tiny belly, and of the two sorrowful faces who’d abandoned him in the Havenwood mere hours ago.
He did not yet possess the words for these people—mama, papa—but associated them with safety, with comfort.
His heart beat with a visceral longing for the familiar sounds of their voices.
He was also very, very cold.
Winter sharpened its talons, mere moments from sinking into flesh.
Two gaunt figures emerged into the glade, arguing fiercely about matters beyond the baby’s ken. He tried to cry out, but his throat was so dry that no sound emerged. Scarlet cloaks swept along the forest floor, the figures already almost gone. They had not noticed the silent, starving bundle.
Fear darted through the baby like an arrow, sharp enough to loose a pale, rheumy wail.
The figures in red turned on their heels.
The male mage made a strangled noise, then strode over to the baby, urgent and afraid.
A kind hand laid against the baby’s head, checking for heat, two fingers fumbling at the baby’s once-chubby wrists.
The female mage hung back, wary, as though sensing a trap, and when the man went to undo the deminite cuffs, she muttered a low warning.
The male mage waved her off, and the cruel deminite fell away from the baby’s ankles. The man scooped up the swaddled threat and pressed him against a broad, safe chest. Some feeling washed back through the baby, warmth and pain and despair and the animal need to be loved.
Save me, the baby thought, not in words, as such, but a sort of primal plea.
And so, because the baby had commanded it, the scarlet-cloaked mages saved him.