He had always had difficulties looking at the stars anyway, for one, the crisscrossing of Uithil was particularly visible to him at night and its light almost occulted the flickering one of the stars. Seconds, this world was already hard enough as it was for him. Being the only son of a men-folk woman and a Domn merchant from the closed Quertig lands had marked him from the onset.

  Yes, he was the child of the passionate love between his father and his mother.

  No, he had not been expected.

  Yes, his father upon going back to the Bogatzko? had provided him and his mother with and estate and enough liquidity to see them through almost anything life could throw at them.

  But he had always been the odd one. Even in a city like Sàmàs, hybrid and cosmopolitan where men-folk and Domn kind had been mixing for centuries, he was the odd one.

  The Quertigs of the closed realm of Bogatzko? were a rare tribe of Domn, they never allowed anyone inside their lands and the sole merchants leaving the peninsula would come to the great markets of the world only to trade, they would sleep in their own safe houses with others of their tribe and let none enter. The wildest legends use to circulate on the Quertigs and not all of them kind. Some even pretended that their isolation was punishment for destroying the thirteenth tribe. Others claimed that they actually hid so because they committed the most shameful acts between each other.

  Fenelon tried to ignore the rumors and the odd looks, the gestures warding off evil when his mother and himself walked the streets of the market and the alleys of the city.

  As an infant, his link to the magical network, Uithil, became undeniable when his mother found him sleeping in the air above his crib time and time again. She called the local Magus to have him tested. The man left telling her that her son could be what the maga? of Sardi in Humala, called a 'natural'. As the boy grew up the more power he demonstrated, in the fair season he would play in the walled courtyard of the mansion floating in the air as high as a man's head, making his toys float around himself, at times he would bring his mother herself into the air. She would open her arms and he would float into her embrace and, as she kissed him time and time again, they would float down to the ground where he would race around, shouting merrily.

  The Magus came often to visit. He was a young man with a flowing yellow beard and eyes clear and pale as mountain lakes. The boy Fenelon remembered him talking quietly to his mother, his deep warm voice going on and on late in the evening. What he did not know, nor cared about at the time was what they were talking about. The magus was making the case so that his mother would allow him to be taken to the Halls of Sardis, far away in the forest at the feet of the great mountain chain of Goldrac. He needed to be trained as his powers developed, the magus reasoned. The boy could become dangerous to himself and to others, for there were no limits to the powers of naturals. It broke his mother's heart to let him go, but she knew that she could not be the one to teach him how to control something she did not understand. And so, he left on the long journey down to the realm of Ukko where the Halls of Sardis with its floating towers rested at the heart of the city of Humala.

  For whole revolutions he was there, an anonymous child with red hands and feet, average and withdrawn. Fenelon was never loud and resented crowds and noisy groups of people, he made a few very good friends and went through the floating towers without making a ripple while most other children burned up in the bright fires of Uithil, wielding complexe spells and conjuring wonders.

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  A great plague struck the boreal reach and Sàmàs killing scores of people including his mother. Returning to the riverlands he found the bittersweet memories of his childhood the only thing he truly cherished. He inherited the estate but since there was nothing for him there anymore he elected to return in Humala where people treated him with respect and gave him the distance he needed to cradle his pain and deal with his nature. However, the older Fenelon became, oddly, the weaker his powers were. His status of natural had been verified by the members of the Four Rings, in a series of tests and trials that he had passed with flying colors. Since then it seems that each year he could do less and less. It became so bad that he even started to attend class with novices to learn the basis of Uithil wielding. By the age of fourteen Fenelon decided that he was of no use to Sardis anymore and left the great city of Humala to go back to his home of Sàmàs on the Greyflow River. His life there was one of a recluse. His servants had been his mother's and had seen him grow up, their discretion and trustworthiness were exemplary. They were the only people seen leaving and entering the estate. Fenelon spent his time in his study reading books sent to him by the maga? of Sardis on the lives of past naturals and on the use of Uithil. The pleasant gardens sloped down toward the waters of the great river across which one could see endless prairies stretching towards the rising sun. He could be spotted at times walking the grounds or sailing a small sailboat on the dull waters of Greyflow.

  "It is in your blood."

  "What is?"

  The very young messenger from the floating towers was shuffling from foot to foot trying to deliver the message that he had consigned to memory. The boy could not have been more than eleven and Fenelon had already forgotten his mumbled name.

  "It is fighting Uithil."

  "What is?" Fenelon snapped, "you are making no sense."

  "Gods, you are as grumpy as they said you'd be!" The kid mumbled under his breath, "it's your dad's blood, duh! Your mom's gave you the innate link to Uithil, but since you came of age your Donmviik blood is fighting or limiting it." The child pointed needlessly at Fenelon's hands where the dark red skin of the Bogatzko?'s nation proclaimed his link to them.

  "Why would it?"

  "Donmviik lore is forbidden for us, we know shit about it but their source isn't Uithil, they tap into something else."

  "There is another source of divine power?"

  "Just said that, didn't I. No maga? from Sardis has ever been able to so much as feel it, they call it the silent art of the gods, or something."

  "But their gods aren't ours, does that mean that Agatha and Orno weren't the only deities on the surface of the world?"

  "Yeah, maybe, I don't know." The child shrugged. "Can I get food around here for me and the guys with me or do we need to get back to ?ama??"

  Fenelon was looking at the immature messenger considering the main fault in Sardis' very existence, they recruited their maga? young because usage of Uithil burned the very life force out of them. The only ones older than thirty had stopped using long before and there weren't any older than forty unless they would be like him, inept. Incompetence ruled supreme and juvenile impetuosity was kindling to the flames of Uithil. So it was his father's legacy that meant he was crippled. What to do with this information, even if he peeled the red skin of his arms and legs it still was half of what, who he was.

  "Take yourself to the office, the midday meal will be served in time and sufficiency for all of you."