"Very small - she's part Dryad - and she has red hair and green eyes and a bad temper. She's a spoiled little brat, and she doesn't like me very much."

"But you could change that, couldn't you?" Adara laughed and wiped at the tears.

"I'm not sure I follow you."

"All you'd have to do is-" She made a vague kind of gesture.

"Oh." He caught her meaning. "No, we can't do very much with other people's thoughts and feelings. What I mean is - well, there's nothing to get hold of. I wouldn't even know where to start."

Adara looked at him for a moment, then she buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

"What's the matter?" he asked, alarmed.

"Nothing," she said. "It's not important."

"It is important. Why are you crying?"

"I'd hoped - when I first heard that you were a sorcerer - and then when you made this flower, I thought you could do anything. I thought that maybe you might be able to do something for me."

"I'll do anything you ask, Adara. You know that."

"But you can't, Garion. You just said so yourself."

"What was it that you wanted me to do?"

"I thought that perhaps you might be able to make somebody fall in love with me. Isn't that a foolish idea?"

"Who?" She looked at him with a quiet dignity, her eyes still full of tears. "It doesn't really matter, does it? You can't do anything about it, and neither can I. It was just a foolish notion, and I know better now. Why don't we just forget that I ever said anything?" She rose to her feet. "Let's go back now. It's not nearly as nice a day as I'd thought, and I'm starting to get cold."

They remounted and rode in silence back toward the looming walls of the Stronghold. They did not speak any more. Adara did not wish to talk, and Garion did not know what to say.

Behind them, forgotten, lay the flower he had created. Protected by the slope and faintly warmed by the winter sun, the flower that had never existed before swelled with silent, vegetative ecstasy and bore its fruit. A tiny seed pod at its heart opened, scattering infinitesimal seeds that sifted down to the frozen earth through the stalks of winter grass, and there they lay, awaiting spring.

Chapter Eight