For some miles into the forest north of the city, clearings are tilled, the nut trees carefully tended, and the road marked at intervals with the fortified homesteads of the peasantry. It is a fertile country, and even with the coming and going of woodcutters, game is plentiful. But farther in, the road becomes a track, the clearings become smaller, and the woods less friendly. Fifty-five miles from Lyn Tirian stands one of the rare dalarya trees, two hundred feet high and thirty feet through at the base of the main trunk. Like most such trees, its lower portions are hollow, and were it not for the buttressing supplied by the "ribs" that radiate from the trunk like fins, it would long since have crashed to the ground. This tree is the home to a man (presumably) known as the Sage.

Stories about the Sage are plentiful: how he talks to animals and hears the news from the whispering of leaves in a wind, how the black tigers of the deep forest are as kittens to him and the wolves curl up on his hearth like dogs, how he is older than the tree he lives in, has traveled all over Ghea, practiced magic and renounced it for the Covenant of Mantor, cast out demons from unhallowed sites, and performed other incredible acts. Facts are few, but it is certain that he is a man of wide knowledge, eccentric habits, and generally benevolent character, and that he will, sometimes, answer questions.