This may seem strange to admit, Reader, but consider: it had been eight and thirty years for me since Gododdin, nearly half of that conscious—though you turn these pages in a matter of hours. Much had happened. Much had changed. Iubalu and the Battle of the Beast, everything we’d learned about Syriani Dorayaica, the Iedyr Yemani, plus the business of my triumph, my not-yet-official betrothal to Princess Selene and what that meant for Valka, the Lions, and the news of the Extrasolarian Monarch . . . . . . I had forgotten about Udax the assassin.
