Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
STAR OF DANGER
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE BLOODY SUN
Prologue: Darkover
CHAPTER ONE - The Terran
CHAPTER TWO - The Matrix
CHAPTER THREE - The Strangers
CHAPTER FOUR - The Search
CHAPTER FIVE - The Technician
CHAPTER SIX - Re-Exile
CHAPTER SEVEN - Homecoming
CHAPTER EIGHT - The World Outside
CHAPTER NINE - Challenge to Arilinn
CHAPTER TEN - The Way of Arilinn
CHAPTER ELEVEN - Shadows on the Sun
CHAPTER TWELVE - The Trap
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Exile
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Doorway to the Past
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Through the Barrier
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - The Broken Tower
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - The Conscience of a Keeper
THE WINDS OF DARKOVER
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Critics Hail Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover Novels:
“A rich and highly colored tale of politics and magic, courage and pressure ... Topflight adventure in every way!” —Lester Del Rey in Analog (for The Heritage of Hastur)
“May well be [Bradley’s] masterpiece.”
—New York Newsday (for The Heritage of Hastur)
“Literate and exciting.”
—New York Times Book Review (for City of Sorcery)
“Suspenseful, powerfully written, and deeply moving.”
—Library Journal (for Stormqueen!)
“A warm, shrewd portrait of women from different
backgrounds working together under adverse conditions.”
—Publishers Weekly (for City of Sorcery)
“I don’t think any series novels have succeeded for me the
way Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels did.”
—Locus (general)
“Delightful ... a fascinating world and a great read.”
—Locus (for Exile’s Song)
“Darkover is the essence, the quintessence, my most
personal and best-loved work.”
—Marion Zimmer Bradley
A Reader’s Guide to DARKOVER
THE FOUNDING:
A “lost ship” of Terran origin, in the pre-empire colonizing days, lands on a planet with a dim red star, later to be called Darkover.
DARKOVER LANDFALL
THE AGES OF CHAOS:
1,000 years after the original landfall settlement, society has returned to the feudal level. The Darkovans, their Terran technology renounced or forgotten, have turned instead to freewheeling, out-of-control matrix technology, psi powers, and terrible psi weapons. The populace lives under the domination of the Towers and a tyrannical breeding program to staff the Towers with unnaturally powerful, inbred gifts of laran
STORMQUEEN!
HAWKMISTRESS!
THE HUNDRED KINGDOMS:
An age of war and strife retaining many of the decimating and disastrous effects of the Ages of Chaos. The lands which are later to become the Seven Domains are divided by continuous border conflicts into a multitude of small, belligerent kingdoms, named for convenience “The Hundred Kingdoms.” The close of this era is heralded by the adoption of the Compact, instituted by Varzil the Good. A landmark and turning point in the history of Darkover, the Compact bans all distance weapons, making it a matter of honor that one who seeks to kill must himself face equal risk of death.
TWO TO CONQUER
THE HEIRS OF THE HAMMERFELL
THE FALL OF NESKAYA
ZANDRU’S FORGE
THE RENUNCIATES:
During the Ages of Chaos and the time of the Hundred Kingdoms, there were two orders of women who set themselves apart from the patriarchal nature of Darkovan feudal society: the priestesses of Avarra, and the warriors of the Sisterhood of the Sword. Eventually these two independent groups merged to form the powerful and legally chartered Order of Renunciates or Free Amazons, a guild of women bound only by oath as a sisterhood of mutual responsibility. Their primary allegiance is to each other rather than to family, clan, caste or any man save a temporary employer. Alone among Darkovan women, they are exempt from the usual legal restrictions and protections. Their reason for existence is to provide the women of Darkover an alternative to their socially restrictive lives.
THE SHATTERED CHAIN
THENDARA HOUSE
CITY OF SORCERY
AGAINST THE TERRANS
—THE FIRST AGE (Recontact):
After the Hastur Wars, the Hundred Kingdoms are consolidated into the Seven Domains, and ruled by a hereditary aristocracy of seven families, called the Comyn, allegedly descended from the legendary Hastur, Lord of Light. It is during this era that the Terran Empire, really a form of confederacy, rediscovers Darkover, which they know as the fourth planet of the Cottman star system. The fact that Darkover is a lost colony of the Empire is not easily or readily acknowledged by Darkovans and their Comyn overloads.
REDISCOVERY (with Mercedes Lackey)
THE SPELL SWORD
THE FORBIDDEN TOWER
STAR OF DANGER
WINDS OF DARKOVER
AGAINST THE TERRANS
—THE SECOND AGE (After the Comyn):
With the initial shock of recontact beginning to wear off, and the Terran spaceport a permanent establishment on the outskirts of the city of Thendara, the younger and less traditional elements of Darkovan society begin the first real exchange of knowledge with the Terrans—learning Terran science and technology and teaching Darkovan matrix technology in turn. Eventually Regis Hastur, the young Comyn lord most active in these exchanges, becomes Regent in a provisional government allied to the Terrans. Darkover is once again reunited with its founding Empire.
THE BLOODY SUN
THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR
THE PLANET SAVERS
SHARRA’S EXILE
THE WORLD WRECKERS
EXILE’S SONG
THE SHADOW MATRIX
TRAITOR’S SUN
THE DARKOVER ANTHOLOGIES:
These volumes of stories edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, strive to “fill in the blanks” of Darkovan history, and elaborate on the eras, tales and characters which have captured readers’ imaginations.
THE KEEPER’S PRICE
SWORD OF CHAOS
FREE AMAZONS OF DARKOVER
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR
RED SUN OF DARKOVER
FOUR MOONS OF DARKOVER
DOMAINS OF DARKOVER
RENUNICATES OF DARKOVER
LERONI OF DARKOVER
TOWERS OF DARKOVER
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY’S DARKOVER
SNOWS OF DARKOVER
DARKOVER NOVELS IN OMNIBUS EDITIONS
HERITAGE AND EXILE
omnibus:
The Heritage of Hastur
&nb
sp; | Sharra’s Exile
THE AGES OF CHAOS
omnibus:
Stormqueen! |
| Hawkmistress!
THE SAGA OF THE RENUNICATES
omnibus:
The Shattered Chain |
| Thendara House |
City of Sorcery
THE FORBIDDEN CIRCLE
omnibus:
The Spell Sword
| The Forbidden Tower
A WORLD DIVIDED
omnibus:
Star of Danger
| The Bloody Sun |
The Winds of Darkover
STAR OF DANGER
Original copyright © 1965 by Ace Books, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1993 by Marion Zimmer Bradley
THE BLOODY SUN
Original copyright © 1965 by Ace Books, Inc.
Copyright © renewed 1992 by Marion Zimmer Bradley
“To Keep the Oath”
Copyright © 1979 by Marion Zimmer Bradley
THE WINDS OF DARKOVER
Copyright © 1970 by Marion Zimmer Bradley
A WORLD DIVIDED
Copyright © 2003 by The Marion Zimmer Bradley
Literary Works Trust
All Rights Reserved.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1278.
DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA).
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
First Paperback Printing, December 2003
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA.
HECHO EN U.S.A.
S.A.
eISBN : 978-1-101-49812-5
http://us.penguingroup.com
Star of Danger
To my son Patrick, but for whose help this book
would have been written much sooner
The Bloody Sun
For showing me universes without number;
in loving memory, Henry Kuttner
STAR OF DANGER
CHAPTER ONE
It didn’t look at all like an alien planet.
Larry Montray, standing on the long ramp that led downward from the giant spaceship, felt the cold touch of sharp disillusion and disappointment. Darkover. Hundreds of light-years from Earth, a strange world under a strange sun—and it didn’t look different at all.
It was night. Below him lay the spaceport lighted almost to a daytime dazzle by rows of bluewhite arclights; an enormous flat expanse of concrete ramps and runways, the blurred outlines of the giant starships dim through the lights; levels and stairways and ramps leading upward to the lines of high streets and the dark shapes of skyscrapers beyond the port. But Larry had seen spaceships and spaceports on Earth. With a father in the service of the Terran Empire, you got used to seeing things like that.
He didn’t know what he’d expected of the new world—but he hadn’t expected it to look just like any spaceport on Earth!
He’d expected so much....
Of course, Larry had always known that he’d go out into space someday. The Terran Empire had spread itself over a thousand worlds surrounding a thousand suns, and no son of Terra ever considered staying there all his life.
But he’d been resigned to waiting at least a few more years. In the old days, before star travel, a boy of sixteen could ship out as cabin boy on a windjammer, and see the world. And back in the early days of star travel, when the immense interstellar distances meant years and years in the gulfs between the stars, they’d shipped young kids to crew the starships—so they wouldn’t be old men when the voyages ended.
But those days were gone. Now, a trip of a hundred light-years could be made in about that many days, and men, not boys, manned the ships and the Trade Cities of the Terran Empire. At sixteen Larry had been resigned to waiting. Not happy about it. Just resigned.
And then the news had come. Wade Montray, his father, had put in for transfer to the Civil Service on the planet Darkover, far out in the edge of the Milky Way. And Larry—whose mother had died before he was old enough to remember her, and who had no other living relatives—was going with him.
He’d ransacked his school library, and all the local reading rooms, to find out something about Darkover. He didn’t learn much. It was the fourth planet of a medium-sized dark red star, invisible from Earth’s sky, and so dim that it had a name only in star-catalogues. It was a world smaller than Earth, it had four moons, it was a world at an arrested cultural level without very much technology or science. The major products exported from Darkover were medicinal earths and biological drugs, jewel stones, fine metals for precision tools, and a few luxury goods—silks, furs, wines.
A brief footnote in the catalogue had excited Larry almost beyond endurance: Although the natives of Darkover are human, there are several intelligent cultures of nonhumans present on this planet.
Nonhumans! You didn’t see them often on Earth. Rarely, near one of the spaceports, you’d see a Jovian trundling by in his portable breathing-tank of methane gas; Earth’s oxygen was just as poisonous to him as the gas to an Earthman. And now and again, you might catch a curious, exciting glimpse of some tall, winged man-thing from one of the outer worlds. But you never saw them up close. You couldn’t think of them as people, somehow.
He’d badgered his father with insistent questions until his father said, in exasperation, “How should I know? I’m not an information manual! I know that Darkover has a red sun, a cold climate, and a language supposed to be derived from the old Earth languages! I know it has four moons and that there are nonhumans there—and that’s all I know! So why don’t you wait and find out when you get there!”
When Dad got that look in his eye, it was better not to ask questions. So Larry kept the rest of them to himself. But one evening, as Larry was sorting things in his room, deciding to throw away stacks of outgrown books, toys, odds and ends he’d somehow accumulated in the last few years, his father knocked at his door.
“Busy, son?”
“Come in, Dad.”
Wade Montray came, nodding at the clutter on the bed. “Good idea. You can’t take more than a few pounds of luggage with you, even these days. I’ve got something for you—picked it up at the Transfer Center.” He handed Larry a flat package; turning it over, Larry saw it was a set of tapes for his recording machine.
“Language tapes,” his father said, “since you’re so anxious to learn all about Darkover. You could get along all right in Standard, of course—everyone around the Spaceport and the Trade City speaks it. Most of the people going out to Darkover don’t bother with the language, but I thought you might be interested.”
“Thanks, Dad. I’ll hook up the tapes tonight.”
His father nodded. He was a stern-looking man, tall and quiet with dark eyes—Larry suspected that his own red hair and gray eyes came from his unremembered mother—and he hadn’t smiled much lately; but now he smiled at Larry. “It’s a good idea. I’ve found out that it helps to be able to speak to people in their own language, instead of expecting them to speak yours.”
He moved the tapes aside and sat down on Larry’s bed. The smile slid away and he was grave again.
“Son, do you really mind leaving Earth? It’s come to me, again and again, that it’s not fair to take you away from your home, out to the edge of nowhere. I almost didn’t put in for that transfer thinking of that. Even now—” he hesitated. “Larry, if you’d rather, you can stay here, and I can send for you in a few years, when you’re through with school and college.”
Larry felt his throat go suddenly tight.
“Leave me here? On Earth?”
“There are good schools and universities, son. Nobody knows what sort of education you’d be getting in quarters on Darkover.”
Larry stared straight at his father, his mouth set hard to keep it from trembling. “Dad, don’t you want me along? If you—if you want to get rid of me, I w
on’t make a fuss. But—” he stopped, swallowing hard.
“Son! Larry!” His father reached for his hands and held them, hard, for a minute. “Don’t say that again, huh? Only I promised your mother you’d get a good education. And here I am dragging you halfway across the universe, off on a crazy adventure, just because I’ve got the itch in my bones and don’t want to stay here like a sensible man. It’s selfish to want to go, and worse to want to take you with me!”
Larry said, slowly, “I guess I must take after you, then, Dad. Because I don’t want to stay in one spot like what you call a sensible man, either. Dad, I want to go. Couldn’t you figure that out? I’ve never wanted anything so much!”
Wade Montray drew a long sigh. “I hoped you’d say that—how I hoped you’d say that!” He tossed the tapes into a pile of Larry’s clothes, and stood up.
“All right, son. Brush up on the language, then. There must be more than one sort of education.”
Listening to the language tapes, moving his tongue around the strange fluid tones of the Darkovan speech, Larry had felt his excitement grow and grow. There were strange new concepts and thoughts in this language, and hints of things that excited him. One of the proverbs caught at his imagination with a strange, tense glow: It is wrong to keep a dragon chained for roasting your meat.
Were there dragons on Darkover? Or was it a proverbial phrase based on legend? What did the proverb mean? That if you had a fire-breathing dragon, it was dangerous to make him work for you? Or, did it mean that it was foolish to use something big and important for some small, silly job of work? It seemed to open up a crack into a strange world where he glimpsed unknown ideas, strange animals, new colors and thoughts through a glimmer of the unknown.
His excitement had grown with every day that passed, until they had taken the shuttle to the enormous spaceport and boarded the ship itself. The starship was huge and strange, like an alien city; but the trip itself had been a let-down. It wasn’t much different than a cruise by ocean liner, except that you couldn’t see any ocean. You had to stay in your cabin most of the time, or in one of the cramped recreation areas. There were shots and immunizations for everything under the sun—under any sun, Larry corrected himself—so that he went around with a sore arm for the first two weeks of the trip.
A World Divided Page 1
