The people of Akaru's sire, however, were distant kin to the faerie races, and though fearsome, were not evil to look upon. They wore clothing of heavy leather over their tough, dusky skin. Their intelligent eyes were dark amber upon light brown. Their upper canine teeth were somewhat longer than a man's, their nails thicker, longer and darkish. Their hair was uniformly black and stiff, and even in their women was usually cropped short.
They were a proud, tough people, full of cunning and daring, and knowledge of this may perhaps explain the origin of Akaru's desire to prove himself.
When his mother died, this desire became an obsession.
Shortly after his mother's death, Akaru was cared for by the old woman herself. But after two short seasons she too was gone, though unlike his mother she was buried in the village of her birth with great ceremony. Akaru left the settlement soon after with an acquaintance his own age who wished to leave the settlement for reasons of his own. This was well, for Akaru risked being slain out-of-hand for his very appearance without someone to vouch for him. When they reached the great city of Lund, the two parted company, and Akaru soon found work as a stable-hand in the city barracks beneath the Great Tower.
His traveling companion, he learned later, was a cutpurse who had fled justice, only to be caught soon after his arrival in Lund and summarily hanged. Akaru, who witnessed the hanging, had neither liked nor trusted the fellow, but the memory of the hanging, the brute injustice and the unreasoning hatred of the mob that had turned out and cheered the grisley spectacle, haunted him. Akaru believed in justice, and was appalled by people's cruelty, which was often so base and vile