Chapter One
In the port city of Luskan, in the year 1341, a baby cried in hunger, for it's mother was dead. She had died in childbirth, leaving the baby in the care of its grandmother and a wetnurse, from whom the child refused to suckle. The baby, a boy born with a full head of jet-black hair, wailed at attempt after attempt to feed him. The child screamed as much for sorrow as for hunger, from the sound of his crying; perhaps he missed the mother he had never known.
The baby's grandmother, too old to care for a child, cursed silently at her daughter's corpse. She had been a beautiful maiden, but a fool, spending too much time in the company of the wicked wizards of the Arcane Brotherhood. She had been looking for a position of prominence among the city, but instead she found herself used merely for the pleasure of the chief necromancer of the Arcane Brotherhood, Nicolae Axondur. When she found that she would bear him a child, the boy's mother was ecstatic. She had run to the Brotherhood's tower to tell Nicolae the news, he had become enraged and had her thrown out of the tower, banished from entering it again under pains much worse than death.
She looked around at the musty hovel she lived in. The roof's thatch was caving in and the worms crawling up through the dirt floor were outnumbered only by the rats raiding the home's very small pantry. There was no use in chasing them off, she knew, since the food was already rancid. She had risked losing a hand to steal the food for her pregnant daughter a few days earlier when her labor started, but she was in too much pain to eat. The now-moldy bread and cheese was being devoured by rats who seemed to fare better than the woman and her grandson. The woman looked down upon her grandson who was beginning to quiet himself.
When the boy's throat was raw from his bawling, he gave in to his hunger and silently nursed. He seemed to be too tired to shed any more tears, and with an expression of utter remorse, he opened his eyes and met the gaze of the wetnurse, the baby's eyes a dull shade of gray.
In shock, the wetnurse nearly dropped him. She began to shake nervously, turning her head to face the baby's grandmother, who was wringing her hands. They stood silently, puzzled at the child's eyes.
"Svanna," the wetnurse said to the grandmother, "have you ever seen a child with such eyes as these?"
Svanna shook her head. "No, I haven't. Not a speck of color in them, save the gray." She pursed her lips and wrinkled her brow thoughtfully.
The nurse nodded slowly.
"What is to be done with the child then?"
Svanna's gaze lowered to the floor. "You know that I am too old to raise a child, and this home is no place for one so young as he to lay his head. The gods, who willed this child to live, shouldn't betray him so soon after his first breath…. but what can be done for him?"
The nurse felt a great deal of pity for this woman and her grandson. The baby's mother whose body, still warm, lay behind them had selfishly pursued luxury and left those unable to cope behind to suffer.
Svanna sighed. "Take him south to Waterdeep. I believe there is more than one orphanage there that will care for him."
She gave the nurse a moth-eaten blanket, which the nurse wrapped the boy in tightly. Svanna loved her grandson though she had only known him for a moment. Time has no meaning in such love, and she had become attached to the small sleeping bundle in the course of only a few hours.
Svanna's back popped and her knees strained as she bent to kiss the boy on the head before the nurse took him away.
"What will you name the child?"
Svanna thought for a moment. "His mother decided on Lokhi for his first name."
"And for his last name? Shall he take his father's last name?"
Svanna scowled to no one in particular and shook her head.
"No, the child will bear my last name, and the last name of his mother: Naru. I will not have his father honored by giving the boy his name. The boy will be named Lokhi Naru."
The nurse ran the name around in her mind and smiled sadly.
"It has a nice ring to it," she said.
Svanna smiled as well, but her slight happiness was overshadowed by the greatest sense of loss she had ever felt. "Indeed it does, now take the baby to Waterdeep, and far from his father in the Brotherhood's Tower."
The nurse nodded sadly and left, carrying the baby outside and mounting her horse, baby in hand. She rode off through the cobblestone streets of Luskan, hoping to journey as far south as Neverwinter before sunset as she carried the gray-eyed baby to an uncertain future in Waterdeep.