'Commoner'      prologue

The young boy squeezed the small cloak over his shoulders. The coach rolled smoothly down the dirt road carrying him farther away every moment. He tried not to cry, instinct told him there would be no sympathy from the dark garbed man sitting to his left.
He could not bare the pain he felt in his heart. That pain forced him to look back, back at his home. As he leaned out the side of the carriage he could still make out the form of his father standing tall on the front deck of their home, holding his mother as she leaned into his chest. He received a hard smack across the back of his head that nearly sent him falling off the moving carriage.
     “That is no longer your life boy. I forbid you to look back again.” Pain throbbed where the dark man had struck his head. Fear replaced the pain of loss. A thing the boy had known little of in his life. He looked at the dark clad figure. The man sat straight as an arrow, his features hard as steel. The boy shrank back into the corner of his seat as the man turned his eyes on him.
     The youth hurriedly looked away. The man’s eyes were lifeless, cold and emotionless. They had the sharpness of a blades edge and they sliced deep into the boy, leaving fear as a toxin in his heart.
     Numbness was already laying hold of his poorly protected limbs. The wind began to build strength as it drove black clouds across the sky, forcing them to the south. The rain season was coming to a close in Dephcrow and as always the prelude to its acme was a storm of gale winds and sleeting rain that swept the flat planes.
     His fingers were the first things to go numb as the rest of his body warmth quickly faded. His nose ran and nothing he could do would relieve his suffering, a suffering of more then physical mar.
     “From this day on, you have no home, no relations, and no past. Your life shall be as I will it. Cross or defy me and you will suffer. Obey me and you will not. Your life is mine, remember this.” The voice was harsh, holding a hardness that cultivated fear in the boy. Even at six years of age the youth understood the tall man’s tone. He would be given no quarter for mistakes and affliction would be the tool of his mentoring.
     His life was turned upside down in a single moment, torn from the hands of his mother as she had pleaded with the dark garbed man on the steps of their home. The boy was payment to a debt his family owed the ruling powers of the land. A debt long past incurred that was paid with the first born of every new generation since.
     After a time the boy drifted into sleep as he succumbed to the exhaustion of fear and confusion. Sleep offered him the absence of facing reality. It was the chance for him to escape from a world that had suddenly grown so dark and cold. It was his chance to be in his mother’s arms again and to feel the comforting strength of his father’s hands on his shoulders. It was his only chance to escape the black garbed man.
     Stripped of his heritage, his family and his home the boy was left with nothing more then a name to give him substance.
     Tarru Deerzy.