The Tower of Keraz was not inviting at first glance. It was thick with cobwebs and crumbling everywhere. Bricks had peeled off from a façade at least a century ago. An armada of birds cawed at anyone who dared to approach too close, and the surrounding forest swallowed its front door up with branches and grass and vines. One particularly large tree had decided the tower was in its sunlight and grown clean through it, puncturing one wall with its trunk and extending with a leaf-covered branch out the other. It seemed to be waving down at Corvo on the ground.

“It may need work,” Mother said. “But we are here for what is within. Not without.”

It didn’t look like much of a place to stay to Corvo. But he was just happy the journey was over. Dorian helped him down off their horse, then hitched it at a young tree near the tower’s destroyed door. Corvo stayed back some distance as Dorian and Mother whispered before the entrance.

The leaves overhead glowed in sunlight, and the ground below swam with shadows in the breeze. The month was summerly, but up here, high in the mountains, cold clung to the air. He found it hard to breathe in this place. The forest was thick and verdant. A pile of snow, in a spot of shade, still hadn’t melted beside a spire of rock that loomed over the trees. Corvo folded his arms and tried to find a warm spot of sun.

“I am certain,” Mother said. “Will you go first, or shall I?”

Dorian shifted on his feet and glanced up at the tower’s top. To a boy like Corvo it seemed as tall as any mountain range, but of all the towers he had seen in his five years of life, it was actually the shortest. Four distinct levels could be spotted from outside through large and long-broken windows.

“You said it was empty,” Dorian said.

Mother stared into his eyes. “It seemed to be empty. There may yet be a few rats, or a hornet whose nest I did not spot.”

“One hornet, or a nest of them?”

She smiled and shrugged. “We will find out. Now: I will go.”

“No,” Dorian said. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll go. Stay with your son. He doesn’t like it when you leave.”

Mother’s shoulders relaxed. She nodded and stepped away as Dorian pulled the door from where it had fallen, lifting it up and placing it partially aside.

She turned and came to Corvo, nodding at the tower.

“What do you think, my little crow?” she said. “I think it will make a good nest. For a little while.”

“I’m cold,” Corvo whispered. “I want to go inside.”

“Soon. We must wait here for a moment, while Dorian makes sure it is safe. Here: I bet you could not climb that tree. That would warm you up, if only you were old enough to do it.”

She pointed to a sapling with two large branches at the tower’s base, near where the horse was hitched.

Corvo was not one to be challenged.

“No!” he said. “I can climb it!”

Mother stood. “I think you are too small.”

He shook his head and ran for the tree. The chill bark bit into his fingers, and he easily made it to the first of the branches. There he felt more sun against his cheeks. But he was winded quickly in this place. He stopped to rest, and Mother watched him with a smile.

Something within the tower screamed.

Corvo shrank. He jumped down the few feet he’d climbed and ran to his mother’s side. Mother lifted up her staff as its blue grooves of mana ignited and the sphere at its top began to hover.

Another scream. A moment passed.

Something tumbled down a flight of stairs out of sight.

Stolen novel; please report.

Mother stepped forward. The door, still partially in the way, suddenly lurched three feet up, like it was heaved by an invisible crane; its few hinges that were still attached to the brick stained and snapped. With a flick of her staff, the door went flying into the forest. It fell into a spot of grass with a dull thump.

“Dorian?” she said. “What is it?”

Past the threshold, the tower was dark. Mother tapped the sphere above her staff and pulled a yellow light from it, a small and luminescent orb, and tossed it into the air.

It levitated at eye level, drifting like a bubble into the tower’s first floor.

A shadow moved. Something clattered in the dark, and then a shape appeared, scrambling toward Mother. It was Corvo’s size and fast. Mother raised the staff and her free hand, and from the sphere atop the staff, lightning arced to her fingertips.

The shape hadn’t noticed. It nearly ran straight into her, when Dorian appeared.

He caught it by the white hair hanging from its scalp. It swore and shouted and cursed in a language Corvo couldn’t speak. The loudness of its voice caused the birds overhead to squawk and take flight. He recognized it for what it was, after a moment: a Kallikantzaros. Or…

“A goblin,” Mother sighed. She dispelled her magic. Her staff went dark again, and the lights on the orb went out.

“There were two in the library,” Dorian said. He held the creature by the neck. “Take Corvo off. I’ll deal with him as I did the other.”

Corvo had felt a child’s instinct to run at first. But he was emboldened by his mother’s courage and slinked closer for a better look. If anything were about to happen, he did not intend to miss it.

The creature was revolting. Its skin was gray and sickly, its hair ashen, and all its body was asymmetrical. Its face was covered with boils, warts, and tumors. The ears on its head were elf-like. What clothes it wore were haphazardly stitched together from old rugs, sackcloth, and scrap linens.

Its eyes were pitch black.

“Her,” Mother corrected. “This is a female. And you will do no such thing. Let her go.”

Corvo made it to the wall of the tower. He peeked around the curved wall at what followed. Safe, but still able to see.

Mother and Dorian shared a glance. Then Dorian shrugged, and he let the goblin go.

It scrambled to get away, but Mother grabbed it by the head.

Her staff flashed blue. Her fingers tightened around the goblin’s forehead, and then a blue flame appeared in its eyes, driving the black of its pupils away like a torch drives away shadow.

The goblin stopped fighting. Its arms and legs relaxed. When Mother let it go, it stood still in place.

“Whom dost thou serve?” Mother said. Now she spoke not the Kathar that she normally did, but Regal, the ancient language of Elves and sorcerers. Yet she had taught it to Corvo, and he understood.

“Eris and Corvo,” the goblin said. It spoke like it did not know the meaning of the syllables its lips formed.

Mother made a gesture with her hand.

“Whom dost thou serve?” she repeated.

“The great and venerable masters, Eris and Corvo.”

“That is better. Thou wilt now serve Dorian also, he of the gray hair, should his orders not conflict with mine.” She smiled at Dorian, who did not speak Regal and could not understand this conversation. “Tell me: be there more of your kind in these woods?”

“No more, mistress,” croaked the goblin. Its eyes remained stalwartly ahead, looking past Mother and into distant treetops.

“Where is thy warband?”

“Slain, mistress. By the Veshod. None left. The great master killed. We consumed his mana. His flesh kept us sane. But there was not enough.”

“Delightful. Wherefore didst thou come here?”

“Hunger. The light atop the tower. It was warm. We needed to eat.”

“The light? From the library?”

“Yes, mistress.”

Mother huffed. “Then be content that thy belly remains full so long as I have use of thee. Master Dorian slew thy companion; thou shalt begin thy service by cleaning up the body. Deposit it here within the woods and bury it.”

“Yes, mistress,” said the goblin.

Corvo recognized that his mother then cast a spell. He had seen her do it for all his life, and though she made hardly a gesture, he knew by the way her stature shifted, by the way her hand moved, that she had issued this goblin a command.

It turned abruptly. It moved like a puppet, animated by an invisible string, and it disappeared over the threshold and into the tower.

Dorian watched as it departed.

“Speak your mind,” Mother said to him, again in the common tongue of Kathar. “I know you must.”

“You enthralled him,” he said.

“I enthralled her, yes. She was starving. It would have been cruel not to.”

Dorian seemed to choose his words carefully. He ran a hand through his short and grizzled beard. “I’ve never known a woman to trust a goblin around her son.”

“Trust is not the concern. A goblin is easily controlled, for she is starved for mana. Creatures such as this drift aimlessly from one place to another in search of magicians and elves to serve; only we can give them what they are bred to need. She may look human, vaguely, but she is more like a machine than a person. We are far out from civilization here—it may be that there is no choice but to gather several of my own servants if we want to keep this tower safe.” Mother lowered her head toward Dorian, and smiling she said, “She will also help you clean.”

Then she left him. She returned to Corvo and took him by the hand.

“I presume the tower was otherwise safe,” she said over her shoulder.

“As far as I saw.”

“It is good I can trust your word.” She smiled and tugged Corvo forward. “Come. You are right. ‘Tis cold outside. Let us find shelter, and some lunch, too.”

So Mother led him into the tower, and Dorian followed after.

Corvo rarely realized how abnormal his life was. But even to him, his time at the Tower of Keraz already felt strange.