Of late, in his manic stretches, he had begun using Radeachar to probe the mysteries surrounding its creation. The key points were known. In a mad, complex scheme involving the Captal of Savernake, Yo Hsi, the Demon Prince of the Dread Empire, had impregnated the barely old enough Queen Fiana with seed specially prepared in Shinsan. Though the truth had surfaced only recently, Old Meddler had had a hand in it, too. The scheme had collapsed. Fiana bore a daughter instead of the devil the conspirators wanted. So they switched that daughter for their own child, at the time unaware of the girl’s sex.

Years later, following the death of her husband, the King, Fiana enjoyed a liaison with Bragi Ragnarson. She became pregnant. That had to be concealed for political reasons.

Fiana died in childbed, birthing the thing the conspirators had planted in her womb years before. Some twist in time had transposed her pregnancies. Varthlokkur suspected the Star Rider.

The horror within Fiana was too large for her birth canal. Her belly had been opened. The monster passed into Varthlokkur’s control and became his terrible familiar, Radeachar.

All that was known to a few survivors of all the war and wickedness since, including, possibly, the dark wight creeping westward through the Dread Empire, sometimes in stages of only yards a day.

Recently, while trying to winkle out anything more about how the Unborn had come to be, Varthlokkur had stumbled across an ugly truth. There had been a day when the King Without a Throne thought it necessary to dispose of a prince named Gaia-Lange, and then a little princess, convinced as he had been that they were instruments of the Dread Empire.

How Old Meddler must have laughed.

Haroun had made two cruel choices and both had been bad. To this day no one suspected. Especially not Bragi Ragnarson.

Since then the King Without a Throne had done the unexpected several times by hurling his Royalists at the enemies of Kavelin’s King Bragi. No one could fathom why. Some thought that was because several young Mercenary Guildsmen—Ragnarson, his brother, and friends—had saved Haroun repeatedly when he was a boy.

Haroun could not confess the greatest misjudgment of his life. He could not confess a sin that never stirred a feather of suspicion.

Varthlokkur had stumbled onto the truth and had been appalled. He, who could justify his own foulest deeds, could not understand what had moved Haroun to murder those children.

The guilt that shaped what Haroun had done since was no mystery. Varthlokkur knew guilt well. Guilt was a lifelong, intimate companion.

The fugitive’s life was narrow and small. He was unique in his ability to focus on himself and his surroundings. He always saw the needful thing where survival was concerned. He had long-term goals, medium-term goals, and goals that did not go beyond the moment. Every moment negotiated led to another, then another. Enough conquered moments became a successfully completed short-term goal.