Mother met Corvo’s newest father while they were on the road. He had fallen asleep in the saddle at dusk, and when he woke up, he was in his mother’s lap before a roaring campfire, and a strange man sat across from them.

Mother explained that he was Dorian, and that Dorian would be traveling with them for a while yet to come.

“Your mother and I have some business together,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

He was a strong man who seemed tall, standing near the same height as Mother, but very old—old, at least, to a five-year-old with a young mother. His voice was honest and rough, and his hair silvered around the edges of messy brown. His beard was short and all white.

Corvo had been lonely since Aunt Aletheia left. He wondered at once if this new man could be a substitute. A new teacher. A new friend. But he knew that Mother’s male companions were rarely there for his sake, so didn’t dare admit his excitement. He only nodded in silence.

Their journey resumed come dawn.

A week passed with Dorian in their company. He was warm but distant, smiling often but otherwise ignoring Corvo. The fantasy that his mother had found a new friend for him quickly faded.

Dorian and Mother would stay up late talking about their business for night after night. They spoke during the day, too, and they rarely let Corvo overhear them. Sometimes he would pretend to be asleep in his blanket, just so he could listen to their conversations, but he rarely learned anything worth knowing—until one warm night on a hilltop, long after he was put to bed:

“…the Tower of Keraz is still where we are most likely to learn more,” Mother whispered. “Its last master told me his library was left sealed and intact, and he must have had a laboratory.”

“Then let’s go there,” Dorian whispered back.

“But it is far.”

“You were headed there already.”

“I had not intended—” Mother suddenly stopped. She turned her head and spotted Corvo. “And what are you still doing awake?”

He pretended to be asleep for a moment, but it was no use; Mother saw through him effortlessly. He could never lie to her about anything. So he sat upright.

“What’s the Tower of Keraz?” he asked.

“You know you should not eavesdrop,” Mother said. But she sighed. “It is a place I have thought we could visit, for a little while. It is high up in the mountains to the south.”

“Is it safe?” Dorian asked.

“As safe as we are here,” Mother said. “It is remote. I did not want to take Corvo there until he was older, for we will have to pass by Katharos. But it seems the decision has been made for me. So the Tower of Keraz shall be our next destination. Just remember your side of our bargain, Dorian.”

Dorian nodded and smiled at Corvo. “Do this for me, and I’ll remember it forever.”

They stopped in a village to rest and reprovision. Their second morning there, Dorian woke Corvo up early. He stirred unhappily but leaped out of bed when he saw what the old man carried.

Two wooden swords.

“I’ve seen you practicing with that bow of yours,” he said. “Have you ever played with toy swords?”

Corvo nodded. “I was the best at it. I always hit the most swords.”

Dorian laughed. “Then show me. Let’s start.”

It was more like play fighting than a fencing lesson, which was just as well for Corvo; he hadn’t had so much fun since Mother made him leave Castle Erod. Halfway through, after a volley of back-and-forth blades, Dorian took him aside.

“You could have hit my arm,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”

“I want to win!”

“You’ll win by stabbing me. Not by hitting my sword.”

Corvo stared at him with a frown. He shook his head. “No. I hit the sword. That means I win.”

Dorian laughed. He explained that this was not quite how battle worked. That was the day Corvo learned that the point of a duel with blades was not to hit the enemy’s sword after all.

“Come on, chicklet,” he said. “Let’s try again.”

Until this point, Dorian had been distant and unfamiliar. The change in his temperament was remarkably sudden. But Corvo didn’t find it strange. He didn’t think about it at all. Dorian had rarely talked to him beforehand, yet thereafter they spent hours together. They began instruction on how to ride horses and practiced together with their bows. They could hardly be separated.

Mother still rarely left them alone together, but she did so more and more, and Corvo noticed less and less.

And when she watched them from afar, she always had a sly smile on her lips.

The way to the Tower of Keraz was like any other long road. Corvo spent most of his time on their horse, seated in the saddle before Mother, bored, frustrated, and tired all at once. Sometimes he overheard more discussions between Mother and Dorian, but he rarely paid attention. All he knew was that Mother expected to find something important, something Dorian needed, in the tower. They argued constantly about which way to go or when to set out, but compared to the other fathers Corvo had known—and while he knew they weren’t his fathers, what else was there to call them?—he and Mother seemed to get along well.

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The lessons continued, when they could find time. When they couldn’t, he told stories while they rode, stories of adventure and epic quests and defiance of death. Dorian claimed to have been a great adventurer when he was Mother’s age, but that the wrong enemy had taken it all away from him. Now he was a simple old man with many stories to tell.

“Have I told you about the Dragon of Epicanthos?”

Corvo shook his head.

“Epicanthos lies in the far eastern reaches, across the stormy seas. For eons it was ruled by a clan of fearsome dragons, beings of mana and malice, who—”

“Do not poison my son’s mind with fairytales,” Mother said. “Dragons are not real.”

“Of course dragons are real,” Dorian said. “I killed one.”

“You did not kill a dragon. There are no dragons.”

“There are in Epicanthos.”

“No,” Mother said sharply. “There are not.” She glared at him. “Are any of your stories of adventure true, I wonder, or are they all make-believe?”

“You forget who you talk to. When I say I killed a dragon, I mean it.”

Mother smiled. “I did not say that there are no creatures that might be mistaken for dragons in Epicanthos. Only that they are not dragons, and you were thus mistaken.”

“You’ll forgive me for embellishing when I can. There aren’t many other ways a man can hope to impress the son of the Hero of Katharos, and his mother.”

Mother rolled her eyes. She straightened Corvo in the saddle—he had been looking over his shoulder to watch the two of them converse—and let her voice quiet. “Is that what they call me now? The mother of the son of the Hero of Katharos?” she said.

“No. But my exploits look small in comparison to yours. That’s all I meant.”

They were quiet for a while. The road they traveled on was hilly and green. It was hot and treeless, but the mountains loomed over them wherever they went, and from down low Corvo could sometimes spot forests blanketing high-up pinnacles.

“Is he really Rook Korakos’ son?” Dorian asked.

“You would not ask if you had known him. They look identical to one another.”

“Just curious,” he said, and he left it at that.

He was not as much fun as Aunt Aletheia. But he made the journey bearable. They went slowly from village to village, staying off the main highways and avoiding the city-states that sprinkled the never-ending hills of the realm of Koilados. Mostly the days were dull, filled with too much talk and not enough play. Corvo had spent the last year in the company of children his age, but now it was only Mother and Dorian, and they both seemed very serious, always focused on safety and rarely on fun.

But there were spikes of danger. On one rainy night, a cascade of lanterns appeared far down the road.

“Who are they?” Mother whispered.

“I can’t see,” Dorian said. “There must be ten, at least.”

“There is a Magister among them,” she said slowly.

“How can you tell?”

“I can tell. They are coming this direction. Go, off the road.”

She rode their horse into a muddy divot by the trail. She dismounted, pulling Corvo off next, and lifted her staff. She always carried her staff with her, wherever she went and even while riding. For a moment she held it up to the rainclouds over them.

The rain stopped, and everything became quiet.

Corvo didn’t pay attention. He played in the mud, fashioning a fortress in a small circle. When he next looked up, he saw a squadron of twelve men in a long, thin formation marching down the road. They wore purple robes and held lanterns, and at the front was a figure carrying a glowing magic staff.

“Make no sound,” Mother whispered.

The men should have seen Corvo and Dorian and Mother. They came within inches of each other. But they didn’t, and soon they faded into the distance.

Mother sighed when they were gone. Suddenly the sound of the world returned, and the rain resumed around them.

“Did you see his robe? He was a Magister of Deiros, the second tower of Erimos. We are lucky he had no Custodians with him who might have seen through my spell.”

“What did you cast?” Dorian asked.

“Nothing. Simple invisibility.” She spoke the next words to herself: “Why would he be here? What are the chances we might stumble upon him?”

“Is he hunting you?”

Mother grabbed Corvo and brought him in close. She shook her head. “I do not think so. I hope not. Let’s make our camp soon—somewhere far off the road.”

They never saw the man with the magic staff again. But they often waited for patrols of mounted soldiers or nobles to pass by, not daring to be seen by anyone except peasants. For a long stretch Mother grew even more cautious, weaving an enchantment over the three of them to make them look like different people entirely.

Corvo hated when he looked down and saw a fat, tanned child instead of his normal self. When his hair fell into his eyes, it was blond instead of brown. But he never complained.

A month had passed by the time they reached the mountains. That was hardly the beginning, though, for the mountains known as the Grelnoi were steep and rarely traveled. They lost the trail often, and became entirely lost in the ever-thickening pine forest after several days.

“I will have to scout,” Mother said. “Watch him. Your life depends on it.”

With that, she dismounted. She lifted her staff into the air, as she had before; It was a walking stick etched from top to bottom with dark blue grooves, as though painted, that twisted about the wooden shaft like snakes. The top of the staff was warped to form a bowl-like shape, and within sat a large black sphere. It was reflective, like a polished black mirror, and seemed to glow in the sun.

The grooves along the staff’s haft ignited with blue fire. Shimmering lines of mana flooded it from the atmosphere around them. Then the black sphere at its top lifted from where it was seated. It hovered an inch in the air and began to spin around itself, twisting with an unseen force. Its surface became opaque, and where there had been the reflection of leaves appeared instead a field of small, twinkling silver dots.

Mother closed her eyes. Then, she disappeared.

Her clothes fell to the ground. Her staff fell from her hands and into a muddy bank. She was gone. Corvo gasped in surprise, but Dorian grabbed him from behind, and the two watched onward in silence.

Mother’s clothes stirred.

A raven pushed itself out from the tangled fabric.

It looked at Corvo and Dorian. Then it cawed once, spread its wings, and took flight.

They waited until nightfall without saying a word. After an hour Corvo became convinced that his Mother was dead, or never coming back. He knew she wouldn’t want him to cry, but he cried anyway, thinking he would be an orphan forevermore.

But he wasn’t. Just when Dorian rose and told Corvo it was time to try to sleep, another raven swooped down in front of the moon and landed a foot away from them. It cawed and stood still for a moment. Corvo stared at it and blinked—

And there was Mother before him.

She was naked. Her hair was the messiest it had ever been, brown erupting in every direction. She stared at Corvo, cocking her head, before shivering.

She picked up her clothes and put them back on. Dorian rose to help her, but she ignored him. She said nothing.

Once she was dressed, she gave Corvo a deep hug. She brushed a strand of thick and overgrown brown hair from his face. Mother had pale skin and a flawless complexion, without a scar or blemish anywhere on her body, and the eyes that looked into his were golden. Her hair was long and often tied up or knotted behind her head, but in that moment it was loose and seemed to defy gravity.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” Corvo said, trying not to cry. “I thought you disappeared.”

“I would never leave you, my little crow,” she said. Her voice was mellifluous when she spoke to him, as though she was speaking a beautiful song. “Dry your tears. I am back now.” She kissed him and looked to Dorian. “I have found the Tower and seen through a window. Its library is intact. It is not—exactly as I had hoped. But it looks empty.”

“How far?”

“Not too much farther. We will reach it soon, and I now know the way.” She patted Corvo on the back. “Come. Let us get some rest.”

They retired into their bedrolls and blankets. But that night, Corvo couldn't leave his mother's side. He slept with his arms wrapped around her until morning.