The difference between what’s right and what’s wrong is often a matter of timing and degree.

-From the Introduction to The Knight’s Code of Conduct

Raziel stood on a field of clouds that stretched on and on, infinite as the sky itself. Above him was a mixed sky. He could see the blue of noonday, the fiery oranges and reds he associated with dawn, and the steadily deepening indigoes he thought of as dusk colors. Great ribbons of ghostly light flowed where night ruled the sky.

And the stars. Raziel had never seen them so bright or so close. He thought he could reach out into the dark and pluck them up the way they said the Sun King had done to craft his home and throne. It was so beautiful that Raziel’s heart ached looking at it.

But a voice called to him, and he turned. He caught a glimpse of a pale face and white, curly hair. The stars called to him as well, wanting him to come and lose himself out in the darkness with them, but Raziel’s curiosity had been piqued.

He found a tree, growing upside down into the cloud ground. He stood at the foot of the tree and, though he knew he was upside down, he did not fall from the ceiling. But that was no stranger than walking on clouds.

The tree was huge, far bigger than the ancient tree in the grove where they’d practiced magic. In the place of leaves, a storm cloud grew out from its limbs, grey, ominous, and beautiful. Raziel felt the same urge he always felt with trees: the urge to climb.

He couldn’t quite remember exactly how he had climbed or, as he thought of it, descended into the tree boughs. However he accomplished it, his father was waiting for him in the boughs of the tree. He looked much like Raziel remembered him, smiling with tired eyes. Raziel ran to him and threw his arms around him. His father returned the hug but only briefly.

“Come on, I have something to show you,” he said and led him into the storm’s heart.

Raziel didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t a cottage perched at the conflux of the branches. Still it somehow felt right. Azariel walked just ahead of him, looking back every now and then to make sure that Raziel was following. He towered over Raziel, impossibly tall, but he took slow steps just as he had when Raziel was a small child. They stepped into the cottage together.

A terrible fight had taken place, that much was clear. Books had been hurled, plates lay in broken heaps, and even the furniture had been broken in places. It must have happened a very long time ago; ivy had grown in through the windows to cover the floor in strange geometric patterns.

“No, that’s not quite right,” Azariel said. “Look again.”

Raziel did and this time he saw that the ivy was not coming in from the windows; it was growing out from within the house. Raziel followed the ivy to a crib in the corner of the room. In the crib there was a bundle of blankets, carefully wrapped to protect its contents. The vines were coming out from the folds within. Raziel couldn’t see what was inside, but he could feel the life of it pulsing through the vines, drawn in from the mist of the storm clouds.

“She needs your help. And so much more,” Azariel said from behind Raziel, his voice curiously distant. Raziel turned to ask him what he meant, but his father was gone. He turned back to the crib, thinking maybe he would unwrap the sheets and find out what was inside. As he drew closer he saw that the vines weren’t just growing out into the storm. Darker, near black, vines reached out from the blankets, twining down the crib and onto the floor. The crib sat atop a trap door and the black vines formed a lattice over it, the ends of their tendrils digging into the floor like desperate fingers.

It wasn’t until he was very close that he noticed the doll in the crib. It was a tiny figure in brown clothes with green yarn for hair. It sat in one corner, patiently watching over the bundle. He reached towards the bundle to look inside. The doll moved suddenly, and Raziel jerked back tugging the blanket away from something hard and smooth within the bundle. It stood between him and the egg and locked eyes with Raziel. Raziel froze until he realized that the doll wasn’t looking at him but past him.

Raziel turned and saw something dart past the cottage door. The wind outside picked up, beginning to howl, causing the tree branches to moan. There was a gathering rumble of thunder that was almost a growl. Raziel turned back to find the little doll standing on the crib, staring out a window that either Raziel hadn’t noticed before or hadn’t been there.

There was a face in the window. It wore a white skull as a mask; a smile had been painted over its teeth in blood.

Raziel threw himself away from the window and the whole world became a confusing jumble of colors and sound and pain as he fell. He flailed, tried to scream, but something was covering his mouth and close by there was the sound… of laughter?

He realized that he’d fallen out of bed as he pulled the blanket off his face. Keira, Hoeru, and Miles were all laughing at him. Even Roland was smiling. Raziel grinned as well as he picked himself up off the floor.

“You okay?” Miles asked. Raziel nodded and slowly got to his feet. As he did, the picture of his family, which had been wrapped up in the blanket fell to the ground in front of them.

“What’s that?” Keira asked, the question hanging heavy in the suddenly quiet room. Raziel picked the picture up off the ground to show them. Words fell out of his mouth as he chattered in excitement.

“Guys, last night a spirit came to see me. It was something from the fort. It knew my dad and it brought me this. This picture was in my dad’s book! It’s not gone! The spirit has it. I think I can get it back. Oh! And it healed my hand!” Raziel thought they’d be as eager as him, but his words only made their faces grow tenser. Hoeru stood and moved over to him, his steps cautious like Raziel might jump at him.

“A spirit?” Roland asked, his placid tone seeming, somehow, careful to Raziel’s ears. Hoeru was sniffing at him with a look of deep concentration on his face.

“Yeah. It was a little guy, about this tall, with grass for hair. It was really skittish but it recognized me from the picture. It remembered my dad. And it has his book!” Raziel’s voice was getting louder with each passing moment. The exhaustion from the previous day was gone. Or at least Raziel had thought it was. As he said this last bit his head swam and he had to sit down. Still he felt better than he had.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Raz. You need to keep quiet about this,” Keira said. Raziel still felt a bit light headed and it took him a few moments to process what she’d said.

“But why?”

“Think about it. We’re stuck here because they think we might be corrupted, or something from the forest might have done some magic to us.”

“Okay? So what? Nothing did,” he said defensively.

“They don’t know that,” Miles said. “How’s it going to look if they find out that a spirit from the forest came here, healed your injuries, and gave you a piece of the thing you want most in the world? And then gave you hope of getting the rest of it back when you thought it was lost forever. What are they going to think?”

Raziel suddenly saw what Miles was getting at. He sat there trying to find some way to refute him. But there was nothing for it.

“They’ll think I’m corrupted.”

“Yeah.”

In the silence that followed that, an unpleasant question struck Raziel.

“Do… you all think I’m corrupted?”

The silence only deepened. It was Hoeru that broke it.

“No,” he said resolutely.

“How do you know?” Miles asked, and immediately looked like he wished he hadn’t.

“I would know.”

“How, exactly, would you know?” Keira demanded. Hoeru turned a glare on her. She glared right back.

“He’s acting normal, he looks normal and he smells normal. Not my fault you’re human and your senses barely work.”

“I will not be spoken to like that,” Keira snapped. The changeling stuck his tongue out at her.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere.” Roland said, stepping between them. Keira huffed, crossed her arms, and looked away. Raziel tried to think of something to say but couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound like someone corrupted trying to convince them that he wasn’t.

“Raz, are you corrupted?” Roland said. Raziel turned to the older boy. Roland was looking at him levely. Raziel couldn’t read anything in his expression, but Roland was watching him intently. It made Raziel feel self-conscious, uncomfortable.

“As far as I know, I’m not,” he said, trying to somehow fill his voice with as much honesty as he could. Roland watched him, his eyes roaming over Raziel’s face. Raziel suddenly didn’t know what to do with his face. He wanted to look innocent. But trying to look innocent might make it look like he wasn’t innocent. But if he didn’t at least try to look innocent, then how could they possibly know that he was innocent?

“Are you going cross eyed?” Keira asked him.

“I think he’s okay,” Roland said.

“What if he’s not?” Miles asked.

“Is he being weird?”

“Well…”

“Weird for Raziel.”

“Oh. I guess not.”

“Then we have no reason not to trust him.”

“But what if he is corrupted and it’s just subtle. Maybe he has been and even he doesn’t know it.”

That was a scary idea.

“Isn’t Alban’s whole job to find out that kind of thing?” Hoeru interjected, annoyance clear in his voice. Miles had no answer for that, but Keira still didn’t look satisfied. She speared Raziel with a look as though that might be enough to cause some hidden corruption to spill out. He looked back at her levely.

“Raz, what do you think we should do?”

It wasn’t a hard question for him. The answer was obvious.

“You should tell Alban about what I told you.”

None of them had expected that. Hoeru looked aghast. Miles was confused. Roland, curious. Keira’s eyes had gone wide for a moment but she still fixed him with her gaze.

“Why?”

“I could be corrupted. That would be bad for everyone. Even me. If there’s a chance that I’m corrupted, then it’s more important for you all to be safe than for me to be comfortable.”

“So you… want us to tell Alban?”

“Absolutely not. I don’t plan on telling him. And if you do, I have no idea how long I’ll be stuck in here, and that means it’ll be even longer until I can get my book back. But you still probably should.”

Keira sat back in her chair at that. Everyone turned toward her, but she looked at none of them, her internal struggle clear in her knit brows and in the way she pressed her lips into a hard line.

Hoeru was gritting his teeth and his hands were clasped together, his fingernails digging into his palms. Raziel wanted to say something to take some of his tension away, but he didn’t want to disturb Keira’s concentration. Roland was frowning slightly, but both he and Miles were looking at Keira. It looked like they would go along with whatever she decided whether Hoeru did or not. Finally she shook her head and let out a sigh.

“We can’t tell Alban.”

“You can’t tell hi- wait, what?” Hoeru started shouting, catching himself when he realized what she’d said.

“We can’t tell Alban,” she repeated.

“Why not?” Miles and Raziel asked at the same time.

“Because I don’t trust Alban. And if Raziel was being controlled by something, that’s the last thing it would say.”

She was looking at him with a strange mixture of annoyance and respect. Raziel liked it. That was much better than just annoyance. Hoeru slumped in his seat, relief clear in every line of his face. Almost immediately he perked back up, looking toward the door with concern.

“Someone’s coming,” he said. Raziel glanced at Roland and Miles, wondering if they’d abide by Keira’s decision. Roland was as impassive as ever. Miles, on the other hand, looked profoundly uncomfortable. Raziel knew he wasn’t the type to lie to adults. He trusted in their authority too much. But he could hear the rolling rumble of the cart they used to bring food; it was too late to say anything else.

Dietrich came in with a cartful of food, and Raziel’s mouth was watering before he was even halfway across the room. After Raziel had devoured his three plates of food, and the dwarf had checked on his arm and made sure that they were all comfortable, he sat down on the edge of one of the beds. He looked pensive as they all leaned in to hear whatever he had to say.

“I’m afraid I have bad news, children. Alban’s wizardly duties are occupying him quite thoroughly for the next several days. It seems he will be unable to perform the further examinations that will be necessary to clear you until at least the end of the week.”

That was met with a chorus of groans. The dwarf nodded along, the expression on his face making it clear that he sympathized with and shared in their frustration.

“However,” he continued, “I have been able to secure you the right to move a little more freely within the building. We have a reasonably sized library and the roof will be open to you for exercise, provided at least one of the guards is available to watch you. There is an open air theatre close by and from the roof you will have a good view. If the wind is right you can hear the performances quite well. I am sorry to have to confine you here, but I will do everything I can to make your stay as pleasant as I possibly can. Do any of you have any questions?”

There were no questions. Only frustrations.