She was abandoned when she was twelve in a desert east of the mijloc, when his disregard for her feelings and her understanding made her useless to him, her gifts inaccessible; abandoned because he didn’t understand his own emotions, ensuring that he’d spend futile years trying to retrieve her-because he’d unexpectedly come to love her, something he had not thought possible. She is a sliding piece, first his strength, then his weakness.

Having walked out of the desert to a tribe of nomadic pehiiri she is welcomed by their janja or wisewoman, Reiki (who is also the form of flesh the Goddess puts on when she visits the World), then makes her way to the Biserica Valley where she lives in peace for a number of years, studying and learning the skills of a meie and refusing to hear about her talents for magic.

On her second ward-this time as a guard to the women’s quarters in the Plaz of Oras, watching over Floarin and Lobori, the Domnor Hern’s two wives, and his multifarious concubines-she and her shieldmate Tayyan learn of a plot against the Domnor. Tayyan is killed and Serroi runs. When her panic dissipates, she returns to Oras, acquiring a companion called Dinafar, meeting the Gradin family on their way to celebrate the Gather in Oras.

In Oras, with the aid of Coperic (thief, fence, smuggler, Tavern owner and Friend to the Biserica in his spare time), she thwarts the plot against Hern, but only in part because he is driven into exile by Floarin and the Nearga Nor. She returns to the Biserica taking Hern and Dinafar with her.

But even that quiet place is no longer a refuge for her. Ser Noris sends her dreams, using her to disrupt the peace of the Valley. Because she is a weakness in the defenses of the Biserica, she is forced to leave it; because Hern is also a storm center there, disturbing the order Yael-mri works to preserve, the prieti-meien sends them on a quest with two purposes, to remove them from the Valley, to acquire a weapon to help them all in their struggle against Floarin and her forces, against the Nearga Nor.