Quietly, he began to sob. Raj Ahten had taken everything from him—his past, his present. Now his future.

In the darkness, Mendellas turned and painfully struggled up the rough stone steps of the tower to the Eyes of Tor Loman.

To block the agony of his ruined limbs from his mind, he tried to remember good times. The feasts in his palace in Mystarria during midwinter, on Alms Day.

Always the fogs washed over the green swales on those winter mornings, and from the pinnacles of the great tower one could look down over the marshes as if one were a Sky Lord in a ship of cloud—the gauzy fog so pure. In places, lesser towers of the Courts of Tide could be seen, or the greens of distant pine forests on the western hills, or to the south the shimmering waters of the Caroll Sea reflecting the sky.

On such mornings, he’d always loved to stand on his own observatory in the tower, and watch the geese in their winter migration come winging below him in dark Vs.

He conjured the memory of a perfect day long ago, when he’d descended from his tower, invigorated at dawn, gone to his wife in her bedchamber.

He’d planned to fetch her up to the observatory, to show her the sunrise. Weeks before, an early frost had killed the roses in her garden, and he’d planned to show her how the sun crept up the horizon in the color of the softest blushing rose, a rose that painted the fog for miles around.

But when he reached her bedchamber, she had only smiled at his request, then devised other entertainments.

They’d made love on the tiger-skin rug before the hearth.

By the time they finished, the sun had been up for hours. The poor of Mystarria had gathered in the streets before the castle to collect the winter’s alms.

Thus the King and Queen had been required to go out in the afternoon, to spend the remainder of the day riding the huge wains through the street, where they passed out meat, turnips, dried fruits, and silver to those who stood in need.

Orden and his wife had labored hard, stopping often to exchange smiles, or to let a touch linger.

Orden hadn’t thought of that day for years, though every sight, sound, and smell remained perfect in his memory. With twenty endowments of wit, Orden could relive such moments at will. It had been a magic day. It was the day, he discovered weeks later, he’d got his wife with her first child, Gaborn.

Ah, how he longed for her still.