Prologue

In tbc small patch of cold sunlight on tb‹ hill abopc b«r cape, the druidess L'Indasha Yman bent to the spring planting with a worn-out spade and a weary heart. For three thousand years, winters had ended in jubilation for her. When she set the season's first seed into the newly turned ground or found the first shoot of returning growth in her daylilies, she would forget utterly the cold, the storms, her hunger for green, for bloom.

But this year, the winter would not leave. This spring, there was little pleasure for her in the promise of the seeds, and her labor in the garden today was producing mostly scratches and blisters.

"There's the rub," she mused aloud, looking down at

the splintering oak handle of the spade. "I should have mended you long ago. Five hundred years of gardens can be too much even for oak."

And too much for me, she thought. I will go on and on and keep the Secret and all the world will change, is changing-but in me now there is no change. My life is a removal. But I chose it full knowing.

She turned to a clump of daylilies and sat back on her heels, peering into the lavender blue face of an early bloom. At Paladine's command, she had planted these everywhere she lived or traveled. They were her particular love in the green kingdoms, for every morning, there was a new, extravagant grace and outpouring of beauty in their flowers, a grace and beauty that would last only for the day. She traced the triangular bloom with her finger and left a trail of silver light in the air.

To her surprise, the light spread, filtering through the careful rows of emerging sunflowers to the distant new leaves of the encircling vallenwoods, until the garden was aglow in silver and white.

"Cheer up," said a voice from the lavender-blue heart of the lily. "All of this mutter about loneliness and beauty that will fade is matter for bards, not gardeners."