All Chapters of Foundling: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Lamps were lit by the time Hunter returned. He walked the footpaths to the Inn on the other side of the city from the gate he entered. Invisible to the few passersby who he came upon. As he moved by the row houses, he could hear laughter or music coming from some. The revelry sparked his curiosity, his desire to find a way past those bolted doors to the families inside, but that curiosity was turned by a man staggering past reeking of sweat and beer, and a growling dog, hackles stiff on its back, confounded by what its sense of smell told him was there, but what its sight could not discover.When he arrived at the Inn, light shone from between the slits of the heavy drapes shrouding the second floor windows that overlooked the street like two large eyes. One of the drapes was briefly pulled aside on the window on the right and then allowed to fall back into place. As he reached the stoop, he stepped from the hidden, and the door opened as if in greeting.“I didn’t know if you would re

The road narrowed, sandwiched between towering cliffs and the sheer drop to jagged stone, as it swept away from Kraag Keep toward the School. The coach pulled up to a pair of intricately carved large wooden gates, made of redwood and belted in wide bands of brass. On the face of the doors were carvings of mountains surmounted by wide winged birds circling pointed peaks. Down through the mountains curved a river which became a waterfall falling into a valley where rams contested with curved horns, wolfs were on the hunt, and bears stood on hind legs protecting cubs. Stepping from the coach Hunter was arrested by the carvings. He reached out to touch the wood, run his fingers over ridges and grooves half expecting to feel the cold of the mountains, hear the running of the river, and the animals to move beneath his fingers.“They doors are rumored to be over a thousand years old from the fabled Palace of the Magi, when the world was young and the Sects were still as one.&r

“Hey, wake up.” He heard the words through the fog of sleep but did not want to wake up. Sleep was far more comfort than the lonely, isolated wakefulness he saw stretched before him. But he could not run or evade the truth, so, reluctantly, he rolled to his back and opened his eyes to a startled brown stare. The boy looking down at him took a step back before recovering himself. “First bell has rung and it is time for the morning bath,” said the tall, slim youth. Hunter did not respond. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and the covers slipped from his chest. The others gasped. “Where did you get those?” The question came, simultaneously, from the two who stood back. “What?” Hunter responded, bent head searching for whatever had caught their attention. “Those scars.” Hunter stilled, and the attention from those dark matchless eyes seemed to draw their breath.They began to fidget. Had they pres

Not resisting, Hunter was moved deeper into the water father away from his friends and a little to the left of hers until the water was up to his chest. From one step to the nest his head went from the surface to falling beneath the warm dark of the lake where nothing could be seen. Water filled his mouth, his nose, stung his eyes. He tried to surface, but did not know how to swim and his thrashing seemed to only weigh him as he slipped deeper. Hunter stretched forth his mind, his powers, and nothing happened. He became afraid, began to despair when he felt hands grasping, pulling at him. He clutched at them in his desperation until he felt them retreat. Why had they left, he wondered? And where he had felt despair he began to feel the slow burn of anger in his gut. He would not let it end like this He calmed his heart, his mind, his body began to slow, to rebound against the motion that was pulling him under. He could see nothing but knew he was slowly rising. Would it be

In the hall, amidst the revelry, amongst friends who had become family, Hunter felt a stabbing pain in his head that bent him double. The acuteness of the pain disordered his senses, fractured them like a shattered pane of glass. He clenched his teeth and forced down the remains of breakfast and the acrid taste of bile. But he could not hold at bay emotions felt as heady euphoria, ranging despair, heat from the bloom of new love, hate, rage cold and cripplingly. All his training was for naught.Goosebumps preceded the spreading ague, the trembling, the blurred vision and runny nose, the debilitating spasms. And the pain opened a door in his mind to regions and feelings previously unthought and undreamed, to a space occupied by something large, insatiable, something that once slumbered but slumbered no more. It stirred, stretched its burgeoning awareness to liberty that awaited it.Hunter screamed, a tortured howl that shattered the eardrums of those closest to him, and fell from his c