My name is Taegan Idris. My first memories were of the kitchen quarters I slept 
in. It was a place that was an inferno of heat during the day and froze in the 
night. I was aloud to sleep in a cubbord near the fireplace that had been made 
into a makeshift bed. I was a slave, a person without an identity or a past. My 
master was a drunk miserly old man who was prone to gamble. If he did well at 
the cards he came home in joyous spirits but if he had lost we all hid till he was 
sober the next afternoon. One evening he came home in a fit of rage after having 
lost a considerable amount of money and caught cook unawares in the kitchen. 
He began yelling and throwing things. His tantrum escalated until he began 
hitting cook. I remember becoming extremely upset upon seeing her blackened
face and then blacking out. When I woke up I felt extremely ill and I was in the 
market waiting to be sold. The man who bought me was no better than the first. 
He was given to fits off rage as welll but they came less frequently and more 
severely. One of the girls in the house had enough and went to run away. She 
was caught as she tried to steal a horse and the master slit her throat as a lesson 
to us all. I was determined to leave as well but I would not get caught doing it. It 
took me a month of waiting before the master left on a trip and I could get away.
I told Nathen, the stable boy that the cook wanted me to go into town and fetch 
some things for her and that I needed to borrow the horse. I took off in the 
opposite direction and never stopped running. The brand that I carry could easily 
give me away at any time and even now I still often feel I have to be cautious. 
 

When it became to cold to travel I took up lodging under Kiara's house, a 
relative of Soraya's. It was there that she met me and brought me with her to 
Tar Valon.