Search Worlds Without End

Alnosha, a young diviner who has studied with the last priestess of the goddess Lyr, must join forces with Kyrn, a High Born fleeing for his life, in an attempt to restore Lyr's greatness.

The king's lottery has determined that Twilla, a young orphaned apprentice of a renowned wise woman, must marry--for only the wedded can survive the terrible fate awaiting those who penetrate the primeval forest. Altered by a talisman of great power, she escapes her unwanted lot and joins a commander's tragically blinded son on a remarkable journey from peril to peril. For they are the chosen who must rescue the vanquished of an ancient war of magic's... and shape the destiny of a bloody, disputed land.

An orphaned child and captive scullery maid, young Willadene possesses an uncanny ability to sense and understand the magical odors that pervade her world. It is this remarkable talent--or curse--that carries her far from the fetid kitchen into an apprenticeship with a revered herbalist and ultimately to the highest circles of the Ducal court. But there is depravity lurking within the castle's walls, inspiring brazen treacheries and usurpations--and foul abduction as unthinkable as it is unexpected. And an innocent girl finds the heightened sense that has been her fortune is now drawing her down into a maelstrom of evil.

A mage, seeking to enslave the Valley and destroy the Forest, has brutally sundered a family. A mother has fled into the woods with her infant girl-child, while the depraved sorcerer holds the babe's twin--a boy--captive in a black tower. The mother dies but the girl survives. Adopted by the strange denizens of the Forest--safe from the mage's malevolent influence--she grows to young womanhood, cultivating a cherished skill that has been denied the others of her kind: the ability to truly hear the sounds of her world. But her future will be fraught with trial and terror, for only she can smash the chains that shackle the Balley and its inhabitants. It is her destiny to confront sorcerer and demon minions, and to oppose the one she must conquer and free: the magician's protégé and her most powerful adversary. Her bane and blood. Her brother.

"The Green Ones favored me this day."

Thus begins A Taste of Magic, the latest magical world creation by Andre Norton.

Wisteria is magically attuned to the world around her. Her senses relish the tastes of magic that the wonders of nature offer. But the peacefulness of her backwoods existence is shattered when her village is attacked by the raiding force of the bellicose Lord Purvis, who leaves only this twenty-something magic wielder and an adolescent lass as the inadvertent survivors.

Wisteria has pledged herself to a mission. Now she and her young ward must brave the wilds beyond their home in pursuit of the ravager who destroyed everyone near and dear to their hearts.

The woman with the Taste of Magic now has a taste for vengeance, and the blood oath she has pledged must be satisfied with the life of Lord Purvis.