Fate’s Pawn

He finds friends everywhere he goes, which is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing for him, and a curse for those poor children who don't know what he's getting them into.

-Excerpt from Duriel's journal

The next morning, as soon as Raziel saw that the sun was out, he threw himself out of bed. Raziel nearly fell over as he tried to jump into his pants with both legs. There was an angry growl from the bottom bunk and a pillow hit Raziel in the face, knocking him off his feet.

"Urgggggh," Hoeru growled, his voice muffled by the pillow he was using to block out the sun. "Urgggggh" translated to something like "'Shut up before I tear your head off and throw it into the accursed, sleep-ruining sun."

"Can't. Too excited," Raziel said, dragging on a shirt. "Get out of bed. We gotta find Miles."

Hoeru moved the pillow and with one bleary eye looked out to see where the sun had risen to. His wild mane of silver hair was even more unruly than normal. He groaned and rolled over to bury his head in the pillow again. "It's too early. He won't be in the library yet."

"It's Miles. He's always in the library. I'll go find him and you can meet us there."

Hoeru flung another pillow at his head, which Raziel took as assent.

The morning air was pleasant, still cool while the sunlight provided hints of coming warmth. Raziel's feet pounded against the path as he ran towards the entrance to Dominic's mansion. Dominic was Peritura's sage, the person in charge of teaching young people how to control magic with help from a few outside teachers like Duriel. Since taking the job about three years ago, Dominic had worked hard to expand the mansion's library. Students helped keep track of the books and organize them. Miles volunteered. Everyone else was assigned the chore.

It didn't take long for Raziel to cross the grounds but only because he was running. In a town of small houses and family-owned shops, Dominic's home would have stood out for its size alone. Most of the homes in Peritura were small, cramped things. The mansion needed its extra size and grounds for learning space, kitchen, library, and other areas to take care of the needs of the students.

Raziel slowed to a walk as something caught his eye. The dust on the stones of the walkway leading to the mansion and on the stairs leading up to the porch had been blown in a strange pattern. There was a patch of stones about three feet long that had no dust on them. That spot ended in several strips where it appeared that someone had been trying to clean the walkway by placing their face on the ground and blowing it away. As he moved towards the door, Raziel stepped around the odd patch for fear of disturbing someone else's work. You never knew what some people might be trying to do with magic at the mansion.

As he was reaching for the door to the mansion, it swung open. Just inside was a scowling girl, holding a broom. Keira was almost pretty. Her nose was too sharp, and her lips were too thin, and she stood much too stiff and straight. She always looked like she was about to get into a fight. Her mind seem to be focused elsewhere as she went through the door. She almost ran straight into Raziel, but as soon as she noticed him she jerked back in surprise. Then she turned the full force of her glare on him, looking him up and down, before dismissing him.

"Good morning, Keira," Raziel said, smiling as she walked past him and began sweeping with quick jerking motions, destroying the pattern he'd noticed earlier. She was a relatively new resident at the school, having arrived at about the same time that Dominic had taken over. Most of the children who came to the school lived somewhere in Peritura with their parents. Outsiders like Raziel and Keira were fairly rare among the student body. She was a bit prickly but that didn't stop Raziel from trying to befriend her. In fact, it only made him try harder. He'd had little success.

"Morning," she replied without looking up from her sweeping. Raziel guessed that something was bothering her from the way that she was attacking the dust on the walkway. He stood, looking from the open door to the girl and back to the door before reaching out and closing it. If Miles was in the library he'd still be there in a few minutes.

"Have you seen Dominic?" Raziel asked.

"No."

"What about Miles?"

"No."

"Roland?"

"No."

For a few moments the only sounds were of Kiera's sweeping and the wind blowing through the trees.

"Want some help?"

Kiera stopped and looked at him, exasperation clear on her face. "There's only one broom."

"I don't need a broom," Raziel said with a grin.

He closed his eyes and opened his mind. He took a deep breath and let his mind reach out to the energy all around him. It was already so much easier than it had been yesterday, as if the magic had carved its path into his mind. He felt it in the motion of the wind and in the plants flowing up from the soil. It was in the stones of the walkway, solid and deep, and in the sunlight, bright and free for the taking. It was in the girl beside him, in a thousand different forms Raziel couldn't even begin to parse out. Most of all he felt it in the mist as the sunlight burned it away, imparting energy that dispersed it into the sky.

Raziel pulled a little bit of the energy emanating from all of those sources into himself. He held the disparate energies that squirmed and writhed as they tried to escape one another. Then Raziel reached again, not out this time but in. There he found another well of power. With the magic that was outside him, he could only grab at the wasted energy that all things released. All of the torrential force inside himself was at his disposal. By mixing some of that inner strength into the swirling energy he'd collected, he could bend the whole of it to his will. Duriel had explained the process to him dozens of times but it was only now that he had actually used magic that he really understood what the old man had been trying to tell him.

Raziel opened his eyes as he raised his hands in front of him and released the magic, shaping it to his desire as it flowed out. Faint blue light drifted from his palms, but that was only a side effect of his poor control. Raziel's intended result was the wind-like force that flowed out of his hands. It wasn't strong, but as he moved down the walkway, the dust was picked up and thrown into the yard. Just as he reached the last few feet the energy began to falter, and Raziel let out all of the remaining power in a final burst. There was a quiet whooshing noise as the wind scattered the last of the dust. The light coming off Raziel's hands flared before it died away. The task complete and the magic spent, Raziel felt weak and lightheaded.

"Cool, huh?" Raziel asked, panting as he turned back to face Kiera. He was just in time to see her step back through the door and shut it behind her. As the door clicked shut, Raziel was left wondering what he had done wrong.

"Do you make her mad on purpose?" Hoeru asked. Raziel turned and saw him yawn deeply as he came up the path. The question sounded genuine but Raziel didn't deign to give any answer beyond a glare. Instead he walked to the door and cautiously opened it. Keira was already gone. Hoeru followed him in and shut the door.

"Library?" he asked.

"Yeah." Raziel answered.

Dominic's library was huge. Or at least it seemed that way to Raziel. It was, by far, the biggest room in the mansion. Not only were there rows upon rows of standing shelves, straining to hold all of the books, even the walls were lined with bookcases. Raziel searched through the stacks hoping to find Miles but there was no one else there besides Hoeru. There wasn't much to do but wait.

So he decided to see if he could find the fort his father had visited on any other maps. It might help Miles and Hoeru pinpoint it. Despite the library's size, he was sure he'd be able to find another map showing the fort without much trouble. He was wrong, not because the library didn't contain what he was looking for, but because the library was extensive and Raziel knew almost nothing about its organizational method. In fact, his knowledge stopped at 1: the library contained books; and 2: some books (All books? he pondered) contained maps.

Raziel's plan had been to thumb through books at random until he found what he was looking for, but after shelving the tenth useless book, he realized that his method wouldn't be terribly effective. But all he had was time to kill so, with a sigh, Raziel grabbed another book. Hoeru had already gone off in search of a chair to curl up and sleep in. Raziel found it a little strange that Hoeru had come along if he was just going to sleep more, but the changeling was a bit weird about people. Sometimes he wanted to be around as many people as possible, and other times days would go by and Raziel would only see him asleep in bed.

Raziel wandered, picking up books at random. Any time he found a book with a map in it he compared it to his father's. He soon found himself wishing he understood more of what was in his father's book. Not just about the fort but in general. Much of the information in it was indecipherable to Raziel. This was partly due to the sheer number of languages his father had used in taking his notes, but mostly because the pages were just that: notes. There was no organization to what was written inside. In fact, the notes weren't even in the order Azariel had written them. It was more like any time Azariel had thought something important enough to write down, he'd just start writing on a random page.

As he walked about, he found himself wondering if he could get away with just showing Miles a different map with the fort on it, assuming he could find one. Or if it was really necessary to have anyone's help at all. He wished he could just leave the city and go searching for himself. He hated talking about his father's book with anyone.

Of course it wasn't the book itself that was the problem. It was the flying city. Everyone knew the stories about the flying city and everyone also knew it wasn't real. It was just a figurative part of an old church story. Even Duriel was reluctant to acknowledge Raziel's story about the night his parents disappeared. So Raziel had worked on trying to understand what his father had written on his own.

Raziel couldn't dwell on the problem for long. He just wasn't good at it. He picked another book off a shelf. After flipping through a few pages and only finding a diagram of the anatomy of a wasp, he decided it wasn't likely to contain what he wanted. He considered burning the book because... well, wasps, but that would probably be rude. The next book he selected was about one of the wars the dwarves in the north had fought with the gholams of the western coast. That didn't help either, but Raziel found himself intrigued by some of the illustrations of the two armies and their war machines.

Ten minutes later, Raziel had more or less forgotten why he'd come into the library in the first place. As he was simultaneously trying to read a book about dragons and look at the pictures in a book diagramming traditional Orcish martial arts, he heard something that sounded like a mouse squeaking. Curious, Raziel followed the sound back towards the door to the library. Near the front was an area clearly meant for quiet reading. There were several comfy-looking chairs and a couch over near the fireplace. There wasn't a fire going to lend the area a warm, homey feeling. The pair of older boys shoving a smaller boy towards the dead ashes didn't help either.

Raziel had encountered the larger boys on several occasions. Samuel was the shorter but considerably wider of the two. Lucas was taller, thinner and, well—there was no other word for it—prettier. Between the longish blonde hair and the very high cheekbones, Lucas looked rather dainty. Maybe he thought that if he was brash and coarse enough, people wouldn't notice his appearance. Or maybe it just came naturally. His father was the town's wizard, which protected Lucas from a lot of the consequences of his actions—at least from adults. It had never stopped Raziel from punching him. Raziel was sure he was about to have yet another encounter with the two bullies.

Their victim was Miles. The rail thin, bespectacled boy was red faced and near tears. Miles was struggling with Lucas, but it was clear he was out of his depth. Lucas was too strong, and Miles was never meant to be a fighter. Lucas shoved him back, hard, sending Miles to the floor in a tangle of gangly limbs.

Lucas lifted a hand and pointed it at the fireplace. Raziel felt a swell of magical power, sharp and pulsing. The logs in the fireplace cracked as sudden flame blazed to life among them. Satisfied, Lucas turned a wicked smile on Miles.

"Pick one," Lucas said, gesturing to the pile of books Samuel was holding.

"No!" Miles said in a near panic as he got to his feet, shaking.

"Just pick one book, and we'll leave you alone." Lucas' voice was calm and cajoling.

"One, no you won't. At most you'll go away for the moment. Two, I'm not throwing a book in the fire! I don't care if you punch me or whatever. I'm not doing it."

"Miles, Miles," Lucas said, false conciliation dripping from his voice. "I wouldn't dream of hitting you. No, no, it's just that the fire already seems to be dying down so we need to throw something in there. I just thought you might have some preference about what it was. I guess not. Samuel, throw all of them in."

"What! No, wait!"

"Oh? So you are going to pick?

Raziel's jaw tightened as anger bubbled up in him. He didn't care all that much about the books personally, but the terrified panic on Miles' face set his blood to boiling. Movement in the corner of his eye made him turn. Hoeru was there beside him. He was expressionless, making his anger harder to see, but it was there in the animal intensity of his unblinking gaze.

"I'll hit Lucas. You get Samuel," Raziel said in a hushed voice. Hoeru nodded.

Raziel stepped forward but before he could begin to run a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.