The calm, mismatched regard was too much to bear, undermining his anger. What was his suffering, measured against the half-breed’s? Ushahin Dreamspinner had been unwanted even before his birth. It was an ill-gotten notion that had sent an embassy of the Ellylon of the Rivenlost to Pelmar in the Sixth Age of the Sundered World; an ill-gotten impulse that had moved a young Pelmaran lordling to lust.

A son of Men had assaulted a daughter of the Ellylon.

And Ushahin was the fruit of that bitter union, which had dealt the Prophecy a dire blow. Ushahin the Unwanted, whose birth ruined his mother—though he’d had no name, then, and hers was hidden from history. In their grief, the Ellylon laid a charge upon the family of the nameless babe’s father, bidding them raise him as their own.

Instead, they despised him, for his existence was their shame.

Even in the Dreamspinner’s story, Tanaros thought, he could not escape the sons of Altorus, for one had been present. Prince Faranol, Faranol Altorus, who had accompanied the Ellylon embassy on behalf of Altoria. A mighty hunter, that one, bold in the chase. He’d ridden out in a Pelmaran hunting-party, hunting the Were who savaged the northernmost holdings of Men. Oronin’s Children were deadly predators, a race unto themselves, as much akin to wolves as Men. And if they hadn’t found the Grey Dam herself, they’d found her den—her den, her cubs and her mate.

Prince Faranol had slain the Grey Dam’s mate himself, holding him on the end of a spear as he raged forward, dying, the froth on his muzzle flecked with blood. They still told the story in Altoria, when Tanaros was a boy.

A mighty battle, they said.

Was it a mighty battle, he wondered, when Faranol slew the cubs? In Pelmar they had lauded him for it, even as they had turned their backs upon the family of Ushahin’s father. Still, the damage was done, and no treaty reached; the Ellylon departed in sorrow and anger, Faranol Altorus’ deeds went unrewarded, and in the farthest reaches of Pelmar, the Sorceress of the East remained unchallenged.

Such was the outcome of that embassy.

And seven years later, when a nameless half-breed boy, the shame of his family, starveling and ragged, was set upon and beaten in the marketplace of the capital city, who remarked it? When he staggered into the woods to die, the bones of his face shattered, his limbs crooked, his fingers broken and crippled, who remarked it?

Only the Grey Dam of the Were, still grieving for her slain mate, for her lost cubs, who claimed the misbegotten one for her own and named him in her tongue: Ushahin. And she reared him, and taught him the way of the Were, until Lord Satoris summoned him, and made of his skills a deadly weapon.