Time seemed to lose all its meaning since Arthur's passing, and the boy wandered directionless. Not a word he spoke, but neither had he any food and only a bit of water from a stream he passed a day gone by. Yet, he was not famished, nor did he thirst. Despite his malnourishment he felt himself growing stronger by the day. It was a strange thing to think that perhaps his silence brought him sustenance, but he could not think of any other explanation. His youth made him quick to acquire and accept the supernatural power of the quiet and of stillness. His mind, not bogged down and cluttered with the worrying affairs of responsibility, and now freed from the fear and pain of privations, easily accepted and even delved deeper into the mysteries of speechlessness. What other powers and abilities may be held within the bounds of voluntary silence was something he contemplated often in his childlike manner. Though his mouth had not opened, and his tongue not bothered to force out such vulgar things as words, his mind raced at an insurmountable pace. What little he knew of the world, that which he learned from Arthur, seemed nothing more than a fanciful fa?ade, and silence seemed to hold the key to break all of the rules and laws of Nature. His thoughts wandered far greener paths than most and took hold of fantastical images beyond the scope of the natural world. As his body wandered eastward, his youthful thoughts had already spanned the world ten thousand times over. His state of being was that of constant questioning, and with no one to answer, and no impetus to speak (or even be around those who would) the only answers he received were the ones drawn out by an infinitely creative spirit unhindered by any preconceptions or biases. He was, as all men might do well to remember if they can, in the eternal bliss of brazen ingenuity.

  His wanderings took him into the eastern forests of the highlands. Since food and water seemed to become no longer a dire need, all that remained for the boy was to craft some kind of shelter. Despite the resilience his silence gave him, there was something unpleasant about being stuck outside in a dreary rain, even in the springtime. Often, he would sleep beneath overhanging boughs of the trees or find a grouping of rocks to tuck himself under during the day. He thought that perhaps one day his silence would remove his necessity for sleep, but until such time he chose to rest during the day when it was warm, and he traveled by night. He loved to move silently through the forests under the watchful eyes of shining stars. He would climb trees and jump from one to the next, sometimes falling, but never discouraged. He would chase rabbits and watch the squirrels. Deer would sometimes never even know he was there as he crept into their sleeping hollows. He never harmed them, only watched and wondered. The owl's shrill often caught him off guard. He thought maybe a surrounding silence empowered him and worried at every cricket whether he would lose his newfound strength. What he did not comprehend was it was silence internalized, the inner-man choosing to pour all the sounds and words of life into himself rather than exert his will upon an unwilling world. In a way, it was a selfish power.

  This behavior continued for some time. While he often thought of making a place to stay and settling down, he ever more frequently lost his way amidst the forest and nearly never returned to the same place twice. The forest spread for miles in every direction and all of it was his to explore. What might have held fear for another, bears and wolf packs and like beasts of hunger, to him were the more boorish tenants of what he saw as his own, personal lands. He was a lord, with only beasts as his servants, but a lord nonetheless. He lived under the constant and merry covering of awe at Nature's beauty. For months he wandered, played, and remained silent in the eastern forest. It was a time of great growth, of strengthening, and of peace.

  It was not to remain so. Unlike the animals who he had managed through an unshakeable resolve to subdue, who now believed him to be one of their own regardless of species, he had no sway over men. When a man roamed into the boy's woods tracking a deer just before nightfall, the boy did something foolish. While strong, brave and, in many ways cunning, he acted with a total naivety toward the man. He thought to leap from tree to tree and jump down and frighten him, and then, like the animals of the forest, the man would pay the homage of fear and flee, or so he thought.

  The boy deftly climbed a nearby tree as the man stalked through the woods. A large doe lay abed all alone. The hunter approached almost silently, but to the boy's keen ears it sounded as if he were rampaging boar heedless of the noise he made. The boy leapt from tree branch to tree branch, managing a stillness so full and deep that not even the spirits would have noticed him. As the hunter knocked an arrow and aimed, the boy leapt from the tree and performed a deft roll as he hit the soft ground below, picking a spot with few sticks or twigs to give away his presence. He stood at his full height, a measly half a man at only nine, and tapped the hunter on his right arm just as he loosed the arrow. The shock of being touched only ever so slightly sent the arrow awry, and still, with a thwack, it struck the deer broadside into its forward shoulder sinking deep enough to hit the left lung and puncture the heart. The boy marveled at the man's focus for only a moment before the hunter turned and grabbed the boy by his arm. Dropping his bow, the hunter grabbed both of the boy's shoulders and hoisted him roughly up into the fading light of the sun to have a closer look. Anger was written plainly upon his face.

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  "Ye almost made me miss my shot ye little bastard! I haven't eaten in three days, boy!" The hunter threw the boy to the ground. It hurt, but the boy didn't so much as grunt. The man drew a small bit of rope from his knapsack and approached the boy. The boy, for the first time since Arthur's passing, felt the strange and binding grip of fear. He moved to get up and flee, but the hunter was quicker and caught him by his long hair and, with a sharp yank, pulled him off his feet. The back of the boy's head struck a hard rock nestled among the roots of the thirsty trees. A burst of light went through his eyes preceding the plunge into blackness.

  #

  When the boy awoke his hands and feet were bound with rough rope and his head ached. The flickering light of a fire danced across a grisly scene in front of him and the putrid scent of rotting entrails assailed his nostrils. The deer had been skinned, and all its muscles were laid bare before the night's air. Some choice sections had been roughly hacked off the bone and had been cooking in a small tin that hung over the fire by a crude teepee made of sticks and tied together with thin, strong twines of rope, the same rope that held him bound. Sitting on a stump, helping himself greedily to the already cooked portions of venison, was the hunter. His face was handsome, even amidst the shadowy illumination of the flame beset on all sides by angry, jealous nighttime. He had a thin and comely goatee, but had shaved the rest of his face. His hair was golden brown, and well-kept. He wore a ratty, tattered leather jerkin over a simple woolen shirt. He wore pants of the same cloth, not well fitted and drawn tight around his waist by a thin strip of leather tied into a rough knot. His boots were ragged. Once they must have been black, but time and use had turned them grey as a stormy sky. His cloak was hardly a cloak at all. The hood was the only portion left in-tact. The remainder of the cloth hung barely down to his lower back shredded as if by some beast. Deep, dark bags rested beneath his eyes; eyes of brilliant blue that watched the boy intently as he woke.

  "So yer not dead after all, eh boy? A bit the worse for wear, but ya seem strong enough. What's yer name?" The question came abruptly and without anything more than a tertiary curiosity.

  The boy spoke not a word, he did not even feign a thought. The hunter waited, staring into the boy's silvery eyes and wondered what kind of parents could have such a startling trait. He was convinced the boy would be important, but he hadn't any clue why.

  "Oi! Boy! Are ye deaf? I asked ye a question!" The hunter rose as he spat the words like venom and tossed aside a small portion of burnt venison into the woods. "Answer me, BOY!" The hunter kicked the child brutally in the gut forcing the boy to slump and air to escape in a barely audible groan. "What the hell is the matter with ye?! Are ye mute? Shake yer head or something!" A raging blaze entered the boy's eyes as he stared down his attacker. The hunter could see a ferocity and power in the boy that he had hardly ever faced. In all his travels as a sword for hire he had met men from every background, creed and area within the six provinces of the kingdom and never once had he encountered eyes that showed a soul of such firm and impossible resolve. There was a pride in those eyes, not of any great deeds or tales, but of a spirit unyielding.

  He's a boy, just a simple boy, but in the eyes there is... What madness, what fire... The mercenary could not continue the contest and with shame looked away from the boy. He muttered some curses under his breath and kicked the tin that held the venison over the fire pit. After his brief, juvenile tantrum the man turned back and looked at the boy, this time with a slight measure of respect. "I am Berach. If ye won't speak to me then fine, boy, but fer now yer stuck with me. The forest is no place for a helpless child." He spoke gruffly, dispelling the last of his awe, and tossed a small bit of venison to the boy. "Now eat up, we leave in the morning, and I can't have ye all weak like when yer dragging that deer out of these godforsaken woods." A crooked smirk crossed his lips, and he walked away into the darkness just beyond the fire, curled up in a large woolen blanket and went to sleep.