McKillip, Patricia A

Raised on Eld mountain with only her father's magical menagerie for company, a young wizard is drawn irrevocably into the human world with all its sorrows and delights when a baby comes into her care.

Scholar Phelan Cle is researching Bone Plain--which has been studied for the last 500 years, though no one has been able to locate it as a real place. Archaeologist Jonah Cle, Phelan's father, is also hunting through time, piecing history together from forgotten trinkets. His most eager disciple is Princess Beatrice, the king's youngest daughter. When they unearth a disk marked with ancient runes, Beatrice pursues the secrets of a lost language that she suddenly notices all around her, hidden in plain sight.

Contains all three volumes of the "Riddle-Master" trilogy, which tells the story of Morgon, Prince of Hed, a man whose destiny, dictated by the stars imprinted on his forehead since birth, leads him to wander strange, sometimes dangerous, lands full of untamed magic in search for a new life for himself and his people.

In the midst of conflict and unrest the Prince of Hed solves the puzzle of his future when he learns to harp the wind, discovers who the shape changers are, and understands his own relationship to Deth, harpist of the wizard Ohm.

When Prince Ronan of Serre accidentally tramples a white hen that was crossing the road, he garners a curse from a witch that results in his father announcing that Ronan is to enter into an arranged marriage.

When the orphan Nepenthe, an expert at translating languages, is given a book that she cannot interpret, she becomes obsessed with discovering its meaning and in turn it leads her to her destiny.