Matari came in the night. To Oboko she appeared like a blur of darkness in the snow outside the temple. He carried her hardly human form off the dying horse, wrapped her in a blanket and made a fire to warm her. Then he gazed in astonishment as she opened her miraculous, beautiful eyes and said softly: 'I didn't die.' They were trapped in the ancient, abandoned temple in the mountains above Samika by a spring blizzard: Oboko - poet of the wind, peace-loving Zen student, and Izzi - the lusty, life-loving court poet, on his way to Samika to serve the court of the great Lord Arishi. With the appearance of Matari, Oboko and Izzi were drawn into a conflict over whether to save her from her pursuers or to save themselves. And when three of Lord Arishi's samurai arrived, they were forced to choose. Oboko, Izzi, and their hostage, Lord Arishi himself, all in different ways in love with Matari, two trying to save her, one vowing to kill her, began their tortuous flight across the mountains of northern Japan towards the sea to escape the remorseless pursuit of Arishi's highly-trained samurai. In MATARI, Luke Rhinehart develops the themes of love, chance and fate which he explored in his sensational, international best seller THE DICE MAN. Against the violent, lusty background of 18th Century Japan he has woven a dramatic and moving story of four human beings trapped by their very virtues into a conflict which can lead only to tragedy.