A Collection of Destinies

Destiny gives to each of us a purpose for being-that nothing we do in our lives is meaningless, that we never meet people by chance. And Taurana-Nhane, a young boy from a tribal island culture, must face his destiny head-on in a most confusing way. For as is custom, he and his friends must go to the Kingdom of Lydia, which colonized Tau's island home, to be taught about war and fighting. As Taurana embarks on his journey to adulthood, as he goes off to Lydia's cruel and extensive warrior program, he will meet people who represent ideas conflicting with his own people's reverence for fate and destiny. For the Lydians believe that man is the maker of his own destiny. And when Taurana befriends Draes, prince of Lydia, Taurana begins to adopt the Lydian attitude of a life free from the domain of destiny-that is, until he goes to Lydia, where he meets a girl who will in fact bind him to that destiny, which he was just beginning to doubt. Caught now between the political frustrations of a foreign kingdom, doubted now by his own native friends who are weary of him, uncertain now of the way he should go, he must decide what to do-to submit to the will of the spirits or to make his own fate. But destiny is too binding, and its two closest allies, time and love, are equally as powerful.