The blurb for this book wavers between fantasy and science fiction:
“I am one of three, three who once became one when there was need: Kyllan the warrior, Kemoc the seer-warlock, Kaththea the witch. So my mother had named us at our single birthing; so we were.” Thus opens the final saga of Andre Norton’s already classic WITCH WORLD novels. SORCERESS OF THE WITCH WORLD is the dramatic and fabulous novel of Kaththea, sister-witch-protectress, daughter of an Earthman and an Estcarp Wise Woman. Kaththea’s destiny had yet to be resolved, and in her efforts to regain her knowledge of the forbidden sciences of that strange world we are drawn into a series of adventures which put a fitting and breathtaking climax to this series. It is a full-length novel, complete in itself, of fantastic adventures among strange races and on alien worlds, of high magic and low, and of wizardry and super-science.
Once again, the publisher seemed afraid to name this book for what it was—pure fantasy. And although the blurb would seem to indicate that this sixth book meant the end of the series, this was far from the case. There were many more books to come, thirty-five in all thus far, although they were to appear under the imprints of no less than five different publishers. This series has a life of its own, and Andre Norton created a world with the depth and breadth in it to play host to myriad tales.
Furthermore, this series has exerted an influence far out of proportion to the books’ modest size. In an age when contracts routinely call for works of not less than 120,000 words, and when books of double and even triple that length are printed every month, these 60,000-word gems are the treasured prizes of many a collection. Not only are first printings, yellowing and often falling to pieces, lovingly encased in acid-free plastic envelopes and stored carefully upright in boxes and bookcases all over the country, but the words inside those covers resonate with readers every day. Not just readers, either—I can’t think of any fantasy writer of my acquaintance who doesn’t list Andre Norton’s Witch World series as one of his or her primal influences. Her peers acknowledged that when she was presented with a Nebula Grand Master Award in 1984. She also has received the Grand Master of Fantasy award in 1977 at the World Science Fiction Convention, the Balrog Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1979, the Fritz Leiber Award and the E. E. Smith (Skylark) Award in 1983, the Jules Verne Award in 1984, The Howard (World Fantasy) Award in 1987, the SF Bookclub Award for Best Book of the Year in 1991, and in 1998 another World Fantasy award, this time for Lifetime Achievement. These are in addition to so many other awards that it would take an entire page to list them all. In a time when books seem to be considered important only when they hit bestseller status on the New York Times list, and little attention is paid to volumes that aren’t issued first in hardcover printing numbers of 250,000, this level of acclaim may seem unlikely. Nevertheless, I can assure you that nearly every SF and fantasy professional acknowledges these books as seminal.
The only exceptions to this may be those who have come to the genre considering themselves to be “mainstream” authors who are only using the fantasy genre as a vehicle for their own particular messages.
And this is their loss. Andre Norton long ago perfected the art of embedding theme and message in pure story, never sacrificing the tale for the sake of making a point. In Heinlein’s words, she was not one of those who “sold their birthright for a pot of message.” And in giving us amazing stories, she serves as an ongoing inspiration for more than one generation of fantasy writers.
It was certainly true for me, and in more ways than just one. Not only was I enthralled and inspired by the books, I was given inspiration by the author. The Witch World books proved several things to me.
The first was that fantasy was just as valid a genre as science fiction. This seems like a nonissue in 2003, when fantasy titles outnumber science fiction titles three to one. From the 1963 perspective, it appeared that science fiction was the king, that it was getting more and more technically oriented with every passing year, and that soon one would have to have a Ph.D. in physics to be able to write books that publishers and the public would accept. In 1965 it seemed that while one might not have to have a Ph.D. in physics, the way of the future was in literary science fiction, for which I was ill suited. But there were the Witch World books, doing well, prospering—giving me hope that what I liked might also be what other people would like.
The second was that heroines were as important and as valid as heroes. Again, this seems obvious now—it wasn’t then, when publishers were convinced that only boys read these books, and that boys would revolt in droves if girls were anything but props for the heroes.
The third was that you didn’t have to be male to write science fiction books. Andre Norton was the first author in the genre who I knew was female. Yes, there were others, and plenty of them—C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Marion Zimmer Bradley—but Andre was the first whom I was aware of. To me, that meant that I, too, could write science fiction and fantasy.
Last of all, you didn’t have to be an Oxford don or some sophisticated creature from Greenwich Village to write a fantasy series. In fact, you could be a perfectly ordinary American female librarian living in Cleveland, Ohio, and write amazing books.
So not only were the heroines of Andre Norton’s Witch World books accessible to a young teenaged girl living in Indiana, not only were they women she could identify with, but the author was someone she could hope to emulate. She wasn’t a Leigh Brackett, living in Hollywood and writing movie scripts for the likes of John Wayne. She wasn’t J.R.R. Tolkien, professor at far-off Oxford; she was someone just like people I knew—and yet she wrote these amazing stories. And if she could, maybe so could I.
And there are countless others who have thought the same, and have gone and done it. That is what makes these books so special, and why they hold a revered place in the hearts of plenty of writers—and with the publication of this compilation, probably will continue to do so for decades to come.
These books are definitely masterpieces of their kind—keeping in mind that a masterpiece is not the culmination of a career, but a work from the hand of a master of the craft. The characters are real and seem alive in a way that should serve as an example to other writers who have expended a lot more energy and word-count but have failed to achieve the same level of creativity. The books are the sort that readers go back to time and time again, long after other books have been sent to Goodwill or the used-book store. They serve as testaments to the right to be different, and as such have given comfort to thousands of teenagers over the past four decades. They celebrated ethnicity—Andre’s heroes and heroines have been Navaho, Sioux, Chinese, Japanese, African, Apache, and races with green and blue skin color, even in the time before the Civil Rights movement. They celebrate intelligence and courage. They are groundbreaking because they not only paved the way for fantasy to be accepted in its own right, but they also paved the way for other women to be accepted in the field. I think it is safe to say that not only did the Witch World books inspire and influence (particularly female) writers who have themselves often paid tribute to that fact, but had it not been for Andre Norton and the Witch World books, writers like J. K. Rowling would have had a much tougher job in getting their books in print.
The Witch World books still speak to me at fifty-three as eloquently as they spoke to me at thirteen; rereading my first editions was a joy. I believe that these books will do the same for you. Enjoy.
Mercedes Lackey
Three Against
the
Witch World
I
I am no song-smith to forge a blade of chant to send men roaring into battle, as the bards of the Sulcar ships do when those sea-serpents nose into enemy ports. Nor can I use words with care as men carve out stones for the building of a strong, years-standing keep wall, that those generations following may wonder at their industry and skill. Yet when a man passes through great times, or faces action such as few dream on, there awakes within him the desire to set down, even li
mpingly, his part in those acts so that those who come after him to warm his high seat, lift his sword, light the fire on his hearth, may better understand what he and his fellows wrought that they might do these same things after the passing of time.
Thus do I write out the truth of the Three against Estcarp, and what chanced when they ventured to break a spell which had lain more than a thousand years on the Old Race, to darken minds and blot out the past. Three of us in the beginning, only three, Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea. We were not fully of the Old Race, and in that lay both our sorrow and our salvation. From the hours of our birth we were set apart, for we were the House of Tregarth.
Our mother was the Lady Jaelithe who had been a Woman of Power, one of the Witches, able to summon, send and use forces beyond common reckoning. But it was also true that, contrary to all former knowledge, though she lay with our father, the Lord Warder Simon, and brought forth us three in a single birth, yet she lost not that gift which cannot be measured by sight nor touch.
And, though the Council never returned to her her Jewel, forfeited at the hour of her marriage, yet they were also forced to admit that she was still a Witch, though not one of their fellowship.
And he who was our father was also not to be measured by any of the age-old laws and customs. For he was out of another age and time, entering into Estcarp by one of the Gates. In his world he had been a warrior, one giving orders to be obeyed by other men. But he fell into a trap of ill fortune, and those who were his enemies sniffed at his heels in such numbers that he could not stand and meet them blade to blade. Thus he was hunted until he found the Gate and came into Estcarp, and so also into the war against the Kolder.
But by him and my mother there came also the end of Kolder. And the House of Tregarth thereafter had no little honor. For Simon and the Lady Jaelithe went up against the Kolder in their own secret place, and closed their Gate through which the scourge had come upon us. And of this there has already been sung many songs.
But though the Kolder evil was gone, the stain lingered and Estcarp continued to gasp for life as her enemies, ringing her about, nibbled eternally at her tattered borders. This was a twilight world, for which would come no morning, and we were born into the dusk of life.
Our triple birth was without precedent among the Old Race. When our mother was brought to bed on the last day of the dying year, she sang warrior spells, determined that that one who would enter into life would be a fighter such as was needed in this dark hour. Thus came I, crying as if already all the sorrows of a dim and forbidding future shadowed me.
Yet my mother’s labor was not at an end. And there was such concern for her that I was hurriedly tended and put to one side. Her travail continued through the hours, until it would seem that she and that other life, still within her, would depart through the last gate of all.
Then there came a stranger of the Ward Keep, a woman walking on her own two dusty feet. In the courtyard she lifted up her voice, saying she was one sent and that her mission lay with the Lady Jaelithe. By that time so great was my father’s fear that he ordered her brought in.
From under her cloak she drew a sword, the blade of it bright in the light, a glittering, icy thing, cold with the burden of killing metal. Holding this before my mother’s eyes, she began to chant, and from that moment it was as if all the anxious ones gathered in that chamber were bound with ties they could not break. But the Lady Jaelithe rose out of the sea of pain and haunted dreams which held her, and she too gave voice. Wild raving they thought those words of hers as she said:
“Warrior, sage, witch—three—one—I will this! Each a gift. Together—one and great—apart far less!”
And in the second hour of the new year there came forth my brother, and then my sister, close together as if they were linked by a tie. But so great was my mother’s exhaustion that her life was feared for. The woman who had made the birth magic put aside the sword quickly and took up the children as if that was her full right—and, because of my mother’s collapse, none disputed her.
Thus Anghart of the Falconer village became our nurse and foster mother and had the first shaping of us in this world. She was an exile from her people, since she had revolted against their harsh code and departed by night from their woman village. For the Falconers, those strange fighting men, had their own customs, unnatural in the eyes of the Old Race whose women hold great power and authority. So repugnant were these customs to the Witches of Estcarp that they had refused the Falconers settlement land when they had come, centuries earlier, from over seas. Thus now the Hold of the Falconers was in the high mountains, a no-man’s land border country between Estcarp and Karsten.
Among this people the males dwelt apart, living only for war and raiding, having more affection and kinship with their scout hawks then they did with their women. The latter were quartered in valley villages, to which certain selected men went at seasons to establish that their race did not die out. But upon the birth of children there was a ruthless judging, and Anghart’s newly born son had been slain, since he had a crippled foot. So she came to the South Keep, but why she chose that day and hour, and seemed to have foreknowledge of our mother’s need, she never said. Nor did any choose to ask her, for to most in the Keep she turned a grim, closed face.
But to us she was warmth, and love, and the mother the Lady Jaelithe could not be. Since from the hour of the last birth my mother sank into a trance of sorts and thus she lay day after day, eating when food was put in her mouth, aware of nothing about her. And this passed for several months. My father appealed to the Witches, but in return he received only a cold message—that Jaelithe had seen fit to follow her own path always, and that they did not meddle in the matters of fate, nor could they reach one who had gone long and far down an alien way.
Upon this saying my father grew silent and grim in his turn. He led his Borderers out on wild forays, showing a love of steel play and bloodletting new to him. And they said to him that he was willfully seeking yet another road and that led to the Black Gate. Of us he took no note, save to ask from time to time how we fared—absently, as if our welfare was that of strangers, no real concern to him.
It was heading into another year when the Lady Jaelithe at last roused. Then she was still weak and slipped easily into sleep when overtired. Also she seemed shadowed, as if some unhappiness she could not name haunted her mind. At length this wore away and there was a lightsome time, if brief, when the Seneschal Koris and his wife, the Lady Loyse, came to South Keep at the waning of the year to make merry, since the almost ceaseless war had been brought to an uneasy truce and for the first time in years there was no flame nor fast riding along either border, neither north to face the wolves of Alizon nor south where the anarchy in Karsten was a constant boil and bubble of raid and counter-raid.
But that was only a short breathing space. For it was four months into the new year when the threat of Pagar came into being. Karsten had been a wide battle field for many lords and would-be rulers since Duke Yvian had been killed during the Kolder war. To that wracked duchy the Lady Loyse had a claim. Wedded by force—axe marriage—to the Duke, she had never ruled. But on his death she might have raised his standard. However, there was no tie between her and a country in which she had suffered much. Loving Koris, she had thankfully tossed away any rights over Karsten. And the policy of Estcarp, to hold and maintain the old kingdom, not to carry war to its neighbors, suited her well. Also Koris and Simon, both bolstering as well as they could the dwindling might of the Old Race, saw no advantage in embroilment aboard, but much gain in the anarchy which would keep one of their enemies employed elsewhere.
Now what they had forseen came to pass. Starting as a small holder in the far south, Pagar of Geen began to gather followers and establish himself, first as a lord of two southern provinces, then acclaimed by the men of the city of Kars of their own free will, the ruined merchants there willing to declare for anyone likely to reestablish peace. By the end of our birth year Pagar was st
rong enough to risk battle against a confederation of rivals. And four months later he was proclaimed Duke, even along the border.
He came to rule in a country devasted by the worst sort of war, a civil struggle. His followers were a motley and hard-to-control crew. Many were mercenaries, and the loot which had drawn them under his banner must now be replaced by wages or they would go elsewhere to plunder.
Thus Pagar did as my father and Koris had expected: he looked outside his borders for a cause to unite his followers and provide the means for rebuilding his duchy. And where he looked was north. Estcarp had always been feared. Yvian, under the suggestion of the Kolder, had out-lawed and massacred those of the Old Race who had founded Karsten in days so far distant that no man could name the date. They had died—hard—or they had fled, across the mountains to their kin. And behind they left a burden of guilt and fear. None in Karsten ever really believed that Estcarp would not some day move to avenge those deaths. Now Pagar need only play slightly on that emotion and he had a crusade to occupy his fighters and unite the duchy firmly behind him.
Still, Estcarp was a formidable foe and one Pagar desired to test somewhat before he committed himself. Not only were the Old Race dour and respected fighting men, but the Witches of Estcarp used the Power in ways no outsider could understand, and which were the more dreaded for that very reason. In addition there was a firm and unbreakable alliance between Estcarp and the Sulcarmen—those dreaded sea rovers who already had raided Alizon into a truce and a sullen licking of sore wounds. They were as ready to turn their serpent ships southward and bite along Karsten’s open coast line, and that would arouse the merchants of Kars to rebellion.
So Pagar had to prepare his holy war quietly. Border raiding began that summer, but never in such strength that the Falconers and the Borderers my father commanded could not easily control. Yet many small raids, even though easily beaten back, can gnaw at the warding forces. A few men lost here, one or two there—the sum mounts and is a steady drain. As my father early knew.