Verdonne was a beauteous woodland maid, a mortal who caught the eye and heart of the god who ruled the forest lands of earth. The lord of the forest took Verdonne to wife, and she bore him a child, a fair and healthy son named Valdis. And the mortals who lived in the lands of trees rejoiced at the alliance between their own kind and the gods. The story of Verdonne and Valdis as told to the First of the Ezzarians when they came to the lands of trees I am not a Seer. What lies ahead, now that I have done the unthinkable, I cannot say. I believe . . . I hope . . . it will be wholeness. For sixteen long years I had assumed I would go mad when I was a slave and believed the life I loved forever lost to me. But I've come to think the gods play tricks on us. Only when I had reclaimed sanity and surety did my world begin to come apart, and once on the path to my own disintegration, I could find no way to stop.