Five years past, while Mendellas Orden hunted here, an assassin had broken into his keep, had slain his wife in her bed, with a newborn babe. It had been only six months since two daughters died in a previous attack. The murder of King Orden’s wife and babe sparked outrage. Yet the killer was never apprehended. Trackers followed his trail, lost the assassin in the mountains south of Mystarria. He could have been escaping southeast into Inkarra, or he could have headed southwest to Indhopal.

Orden had guessed Indhopal or Muyyatin. But he could not have struck out blindly at his neighbors, without proof.

So he’d waited, and waited, for assassins to strike again, to come for him personally.

They never did.

Orden had lost a part of himself, he knew. He’d lost his wife, the one love of his life. He’d never remarried, planned never to remarry. If one cannot replace a lost hand or a leg, how can one hope to replace half of himself?

For years now, he’d acutely felt the pain. With so many endowments of wit, he could perfectly recall her tone of voice, her face. In his dreams Corette yet walked and spoke with him. Often when he woke on a cold winter’s morning, he felt surprised to find that her soft flesh was not cupping him, trying to drink his warmth, the way she had when still alive.

He found it hard to describe the sense of loss he felt. King Orden had once tried to express it to himself.

He did not feel that he had lost his future, that his life was at an end. His son was his future. King Orden would continue, go on without his wife, if the Powers so willed it.

Nor did he feel he had lost his past, for Orden could remember perfectly the taste of Corette’s kisses on the night of their wedding, the way she cried in joy when she first suckled Gaborn.

No, it was the present he had lost. The opportunity to be with his wife, to love her, to spend each waking moment in her company.

His past was gone. All of his good memories would soon become unbearable. King Sylvarresta was not dead yet, so far as Orden knew, but sometime this evening, Borenson would try to carry out his orders. Orden would be forced to kill the man he most loved and admired.

It was a foul thing, a bitter seasoning to a fine meal.

Perhaps Stevedore Hark understood what he felt, for the innkeeper got a thin stew cooking for some of the men, then came to sit a few moments at Orden’s feet, commiserating.

“We heard the news last night from Castle Sylvarresta,” he whispered. “Bad news. The worst of my life.”