I know Peter S. Beagle as the author of The Folk of the Air and The Last Unicorn, They were good enough for me to try this book.

Peter S. Beagle has written a poetic tale of fate and magic. The inn where the story starts is run by a gruff innkeeper and his overworked, adolescent stable-boy. To it come three mysterious and talented women, demanding the innkeepe's best room. One is a fighter. One is a nun with a magical fox as a companion. Their pale companion is a village girl whom they saved from drowning by raising her from death using a magic ring and a crop-growing spell. At a distance follows the village boy who loved the girl, hoping to re-awaken her memory of him. The women are trying to find their lost teacher, a magician who is in danger of dying with his soul troubled--which would make him become a hungry ghost. The nun is trailed by dangerous assasins. A resentful former pupil of the magician complicates the picture. It is a pretty knot, a series of acrobatic tricks, some character development... and then it's over.