Dancer's Rise — Jo Clayton

SERROI--
first a warrior woman, later a pawn of the lost evil wizard her people had ever known, and finally a powerful worker of earth magic. For centuries spell-imprisoned, Serroi has at last escaped her bonds to find herself in a changed land, a place of scattered city-states which have slowly been acquiring artifacts of technology. And with Serroi's return, magic, long-vanquished and vanished, seems at last to be reappearing.

Seeking a role in this strange new world, Serroi, along with three valiant companions, has taken on the task of delivering a newly created device to the leader of a distant city-state. But as she sets out on her mission, the very land and all its people seem to turn against her. Even her dreams are haunted by images of an eerie phantasm of death. Yet it is'hot until she arrives at her final destination that Serroi begins to discover the true nature of the enemy she faces, an enemy able to seize control of the minds and souls of others, an enemy determined to claim Serroi for its own....