Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
BOOK I: Regis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
BOOK II: Rinaldo
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
BOOK III: Danilo
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
BOOK IV: Regis
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
From DAW Books:
SWORD AND SORCERESS I-XXI
THE NOVELS OF DARKOVER
EXILE’S SONG
THE SHADOW MATRIX
TRAITOR’S SUN
THE ALTON GIFT
HASTUR LORD
(With Deborah J. Ross)
The Clingfire Trilogy
(With Deborah J. Ross)
THE FALL OF NESKAYA
ZANDRU’S FORGE
A FLAME IN HALI
Special omnibus editions:
HERITAGE AND EXILE
The Heritage of Hastur | Sharra’s Exile
THE AGES OF CHAOS
Stormqueen! | Hawkmistress!
THE SAGA OF THE RENUNCIATES
The Shattered Chain | Thendara House
City of Sorcery
THE FORBIDDEN CIRCLE
The Spell Sword | The Forbidden Tower
A WORLD DIVIDED
The Bloody Sun | The Winds of Darkover
Star of Danger
DARKOVER: FIRST CONTACT
Darkover Landfall | Two To Conquer
TO SAVE A WORLD
The World Wreckers | The Planet Savers
Copyright © 2010 by The Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust
All Rights Reserved.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1497.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All characters in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-19670-0
First printing, January 2010
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DEDICATIONS
Marion Zimmer Bradley: To Cynthia McQuillin, who allows me to indulge my favorite vice, talking about Darkover.
—July 26, 1998
Deborah J. Ross: To Betsy Wollheim, who preserved what Marion had written, until it was to time to finish it.
—December 19, 2008
NOTES
Marion Zimmer Bradley: For those with an obsessive need to know which book comes after which on Darkover, these events occur after The World Wreckersand before Exile’s Song—about ten years.
Deborah J. Ross: Marion created Darkover over the span of three decades, from the 1962 publication of Planet Saversand Sword of Aldonesuntil her death in 1999. Over the years, she developed, matured, and reworked many aspects of this rich, marvelous world. In such a process, given that Marion never let previously published details interfere with a good story, minor inconsistencies of geography and time are inevitable. What is important is that each story be whole in itself and emotionally satisfying.
BOOK I: Regis
1
Above the ancient city of Thendara, the great crimson sun of Darkover crept toward midday. Winter was drawing to a close, yet even at this hour, shadows stretched across the narrow, twisting streets of the Old Town. Snowfall had been light for the last tenday, and the marketplaces surged with renewed life, anticipating the approach of spring.
Regis Hastur, the Heir of his Domain, stood on a balcony of Comyn Castle and wrapped his fur-lined cloak more tightly around his shoulders. He was a tall man in his mid thirties, with startling white hair and the intense masculine beauty of his clan. His gaze slowly swept from the spires and towers of Thendara to the Terran Trade City, the rising steel edifice of the Empire Headquarters complex and, still farther, the spaceport.
Throughout this past winter, he had divided his time between attending sessions of the Cortes, negotiating disputes and trade agreements between city magistrates and various guilds, and meeting with representatives of the Terran Empire and diplomatic envoys from the Seven Domains that once had formed Darkover’s ruling Council.
Oddly, Regis found himself nostalgic for the days when the Comyn gathered together, debating and discussing, scheming and plotting, planning marriages and trading gossip, even those times when a traditional evening of dancing and music was punctuated by the occasional formal duel.
Those days, he reflected, would never come again. Between a low birth rate, natural decline, and the targeted assassinations of the World Wreckers, the Comyn had been decimated, their remnants scattered. These last ten years had been an unbroken struggle to restore the ecology of the planet while trying to develop a new system of government. In his more pessimistic moments, Regis admitted that his idea for a new ruling Council, one open to telepaths of any caste, had been a singularly lame-brained scheme. What had he been thinking, to exchange men who had been educated for leadership since birth for a patched-together assembly that was inexperienced, sometimes illiterate, often pathologically independent? Even the Keepers, with years of rigorous discipline in the use of their psychic powers, had little training in matters beyond their own Towers.