Fool’s Quest

Of the naturally bred one named Beloved, we have only a brief genealogy. This was due to carelessness of the part of the Servant who received the child at the gates. Although he claimed that he took a complete account of his parentage and siblings, the document either does not exist or was separated from the child and misplaced during his acceptance and orientation time. Some have suggested the candidate himself stole and destroyed the document, but I find this unlikely. His cleverness has been overestimated by far too many of his caretakers.

While at first the child was cheerful and obedient as his family had assured him that Clerres was where he belonged and he would be cared for, as days passed, he became morose and impassive. He shared little with those who attempted to ascertain his lineage. We can say with relative certainty that he had lived with his parents for over twenty years, that all three of his parents were elderly and becoming unable to continue to care for themselves or Beloved. He initially asserted that he had two sisters whom he missed badly. Later, he denied having any siblings. An effort to locate them and harvest their offspring for interbreeding with our established pool of those who carry White lineage was not successful.

Thus Beloved remains the only member of his lineage that we have in our records. Our efforts to have Beloved contribute a child to our stock have been in vain. He is stubborn, occasionally violent, argumentative, and incites like behaviors in the other Whites if allowed to be in contact with them. When it was decided that he should be marked for easy identification no matter where he might go, he resisted the tattooing process, even attempting to burn the completed markings from his own back.

While it is an extreme solution, in my opinion he should be eliminated. Even the accounts of his dreams should be excised from the regular listings and placed separately in our records as I judge them to be unreliable reports. His rebellion knows no bounds and he exhibits no respect. It is my considered opinion that he will never be useful to us. On the contrary, he will be destructive, kindle rebellion, and disrupt the order and peace of Clerres.

—Yarielle, Servant

The first day and a half of fleeing from Dwalia were brutal for Shun and me. We found a tree-well the first night and huddled together there, shaking as much from terror as cold. Close to the trunk of the massive spruce tree, the earth was bare of snow but carpeted thickly with generations of fallen needles. The down-swooping branches were like the walls of a tent. We’d been unable to hide the tracks we made crawling into that space. We could only hope that no one would attempt to track us.