Blackberry in the Valley

What can trouble any teenager? Tristan Trouver, a novice of the Order of Palerors, can’t stop thinking about his own calling. From childhood, he had been preparing for his initiation into knighthood, but one day in the forest he met a fairy—and fell in love with her at first sight. How can he choose between feeling and duty, especially when a shadow of the Great War is thickening over the world? The young man must decide who he will become: a hero walking along a preordained path, or a person who allows himself simple happiness beside the one he loves. However, just before his graduation from school, Tristan learns something else—an обстоятельство (circumstance) that could turn everything upside down.

This is the first novella in the cycle about the Great War and the Sleeping King. A story about choice, friendship, and love—about the desire to be needed in a world where swords and shields have given way to rifles, tanks, and aircraft.