Whether he succeeded in cheating death or not we cannot know, but it is unlikely, as the Empire fell apart very soon after his death and the vast monument he caused to be constructed at such crippling expense to his empire was looted utterly within the year and fell quickly into disrepair, so that now it is used only as a ready source of dressed stone for the city of Haspide, which was founded a few centuries later on the same island, in what is now called Crater Lake, in the Kingdom of Haspidus."

"What a sad tale! But what happened to the family of Munnosh?" asked the lady Perrund. The lady Perrund had once been the first concubine of the Protector.

She remained a prized partner of the General's household and one whom he was still known to visit on occasion.

The bodyguard DeWar shrugged. "We don't know," he told her. "The Empire fell, the Kings fought amongst themselves, the barbarians invaded from all sides, fire fell from the sky and a dark age resulted that lasted many hundreds of years. Little historical detail survived the fall of the lesser kingdoms."

"But we may hope that the assassins heard their Emperor was dead and so did not carry out their mission, may we not? Or that they were caught up in the chaos of the Empire's collapse and had to look to their own safety. Would that not be likely?"

DeWar looked into the eyes of the lady Perrund and smiled. "Perfectly possible, my lady."

"Good," she said, crossing one arm across the other and settling back to lean over the game board again. "That is what I shall choose to believe, then. Now we can restart our game. It was my move, I believe."

DeWar smiled as he watched Perrund put one clenched fist to her mouth. Her gaze, beneath long fair lashes, flicked this way and that across the game board, coming to rest on pieces for a few moments, then sweeping away again.

She wore the long, plain red day-gown of the senior ladies of the court, one of the few fashions the Protectorate had inherited from the earlier Kingdom, which the Protector and his fellow generals had overthrown in the war of succession.