He broke into quiet sobs. The druid-wizard thought she sensed an image in his mind-an image of a woman…

Clearly the man had gone mad in his isolation. Fascinating.

The druid-wizard could almost imagine that he spoke to her somehow, and not to the rose. Some part of her responded to the idea with a surge of longing so sudden that she could not breathe, an imperative that, for a moment, wiped out all else.

She had not lost control of her emotions in such a way since childhood. To know surprise at a simple hermit's thought-projection! To be blindsided by emotion hitherto suppressed, unsuspected! She should leave; power of this magnitude could ruin her. Even as she thought this, she knew that whatever force was at work here had already secured its hold on her. Plus, she must complete the task for the Shadovar, and that meant exploring every avenue of this country. She must see where this path led.

The man shook himself. Perhaps he chided himself for becoming so emotional over a plant, or perhaps he shuddered in an echo of the druid-wizard's longing. He stood and entered his cabin, closing the door behind him, leaving the rose to nod and twitch alone. It turned to face the druid-wizard-almost as if it knew she was there and regarded her with curiosity. But that was just the way some breeze had blown it.

Angry with herself, the druid-wizard resumed her human shape abruptly enough to cause herself pain and strode to the cottage's back door. She hated her weakness, but she could not deny that she wanted the man- wanted to make him speak to her as he had spoken to the rose.

As she knocked, she forced her turmoil aside and focused upon enhancing her beauty. She drew from the vague image of the woman she had seen in the man's mind, as well as from her own ideal self-image. Her eye color intensified; her hair took on new highlights and curls; the top few buttons of her shirt undid themselves. No man had ever resisted this spell.

The man opened the door, a puzzled half-smile betraying surprise at the appearance of a visitor so soon after his moment with the rose-and at the back door, no less. For a moment his heart had surged with the wild hope that… but no, he must not indulge such fantasies.

When he saw the woman, puzzlement gave way to lust and wariness, the latter because one such as this woman would never appear at a place such as this without trouble in the land or powerful magic at work.

Time for the druid-wizard to play her part, if she was really to make this man her own.

She adopted an expression of uncertainty and stammered a pattern of truths and half-truths. "I… I… felt drawn to this place. I have no one, and I dreamed that I must journey… I saw you with your rose, and I thought I would like to know love like that. So… here I am.

"I’ll leave if I came in error," she added, to dispel any doubts that might remain after her speech.

He said not a word-not one word for her in that voice!-but drew her inside.

Now I’ll see if I can call forth love as effectively as I can call forth pain, she thought. And, once I do, to see if love can grant me as much gratification. Perhaps, as some attest, even more.

She let her body take control-drew his head to hers, kissed him deeply, felt him kiss back. From there they fell to the floor, and so the day passed.

Afterward, as they sat at the table over fresh bowls of stew and the druid-wizard secretly used her magic to destroy any chance of a child taking root, the man finally spoke to her.

"I dreamed I would meet you," he said.

He had recurring dreams of a woman linked to him with powerful bonds. The bonds, though they kept the woman's spirit close to his, stretched over chasms of time and space. Her features were usually indistinct, but he thought she might look something like the druid-wizard.

"Was that the same dream in which your rose spoke to you?"

He looked at her askance. "No… you heard that?"

“Yes, I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself."

He frowned, then shook his head. "It's fine. It's probably good that you came now. I think I might have started to invent things, to hallucinate, if I'd been alone much longer."

Perhaps you already were hallucinating, the druid-wizard thought. She said, "How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. A long time. I got tired of cities and people and just wanted to get away for a while. How about you?"

"I've been alone for a long time, too. I live in the city, though, and I have… pets."

"That must help."

They fell into pregnant silence.

"Will you go back to the city, then?" he asked. "To take care of your pets?"

"Oh… yeah, I should. It's still home for now, even though I've found true love." She met his eyes and smiled as though at a joke. "Would you like to come with me?"

True love, she had said. The man supposed they were true lovers-he had dreamed of a woman something like this one, and this woman had been drawn here. But the words rang crass. He considered expressions of true love best uttered in times of great emotion, great change-not over bowls of half-eaten stew and among garden tools and cupboards. Just because she didn't share this fancy… that didn't mean he and this woman weren't destined for each other.

In any case, he had been away from the world long enough.

"I think… I think I will go with you," he said.

His thoughts drifted. What did this woman do, he wondered, when she wasn't trying to find her true love in the wilderness? And what city was she from?

He posed his questions.

"I do magic tricks," she replied, "in Phlan, on the Moonsea. I plan to move soon, though."

The druid-wizard watched the man clean up their dishes. Engineering his love had been easy; now she must figure out how to draw upon its power.

3

"Long is the times but there are times when… so you see what I'm saying."

– Chever's last notes

In the days and tendays that followed, the druid-wizard grew fond of the man. She enjoyed watching his thin muscles flex as he applied his pickaxe to stones with which he planned to line a walkway from the garden to the creek, for whoever might choose to occupy his cabin after they left. A small application of her magic could have broken the stones much more easily, but the time was not yet right to reveal to him exactly what kinds of "magic tricks" she could do.

One day, he showed her the parchment pages she had seen through the window when she first came upon the cabin-pages he studied in his spare time.

They were the notes of Chever.

The druid-wizard's eyes narrowed.

The man would not say how he had come by them. The druid-wizard guessed the experience must have been horrifying, as his face went gray and slack, and his eyes took on a faraway look, the few times she had tried to get him to divulge on the subject.

The man believed that the notes held some of the universe's secrets, which would be his if only he could unlock the notes' meaning. Sometimes he felt on the verge of something great, but so far his efforts had rewarded him with only enough enlightenment to make him want more.

On sunny days, the man showed the druid-wizard his favorite groves and clearings. When it rained, they toured hidden caves. He told her about strange beasts he had glimpsed higher up on the mountain slopes and about the occasional eccentric he had met while scavenging for food. In most of the places the man showed her, the druid-wizard could detect faint, benign magic-in sharp contrast to the darker magic to which she was more accustomed.