Yet this planet had been discovered by the Terran Empire less than a hundred years ago, and the Trade City built less than fifty years ago. The little he knew about this planet showed him that its history was longer than that of the Empire.
So what was the answer? There were stories of “Lost Ships,” taking off from Terra itself in the days before the Empire, thousands of years ago, disappearing without trace. Most of them had been believed destroyed—the ships of those days had been ridiculous contraptions, running on primitive atomic or matter-antimatter drives. But one of them might somehow have survived. He faced the fact that he’d probably never know, but he had the rest of his life to find out. Anyway, did it matter? He knew all he needed to know.
He clasped Callista closer in his arms; she made a small involuntary movement of protest, then smiled and deliberately moved against him. He thought, I really know nothing about her. Then, remembering that incredible four-way moment of fusion and total acceptance, he realized that he knew all he needed to know about her, too. Already he had noticed that she no longer shrank from a casual touch. He thought, with great tenderness, that if she had been conditioned against desire or sensual response, at least the conditioning was not irrevocable, and they had time enough to wait. Already, he suspected, it had been breached by days of terror alone in the darkness, and by her hunger for any other human presence. But they already belonged to one another in the way that mattered most. The rest would come in time. He was sure of that, and he found himself wondering, whimsically, if pre-cognition was among the new psi talents he’d be exploring.
As they rode through the great looming gates of Armida, a light snow had begun to fall; and Andrew remembered that less than a week ago he had been lying on a ledge in a howling storm, waiting to die.
Callista shivered—did she remember it too?—and he bent down and murmured tenderly, “We’re almost home, my beloved.” And already it did not seem strange to think of it as home.
He had followed a dream, and it had brought him here.
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Author’s Note On Chronology
« ^
I am always being asked by those who have read anywhere from three to nine of the Darkover books to tell them exactly when and where any given book fits, chronologically, into the series. While I am always grateful for the interest of my readers, usually the only answer I can give is a shrug. I have always tried to make each of the Darkover books so complete that each one can be read by itself, even if the reader has never seen any of the other books before.
I do not really think of them as a “series” but rather of Darkover as a familiar world about which I like writing novels, and to which the readers seem to like returning. Where absolute consistency might damage the self-sufficiency of any given book, I have quite frankly sacrificed consistency. I make no apologies for this.
Nothing is more frustrating to me than to read the second, or fourth, or sixth book of a series, and to have the author blandly assume that I have read all his other books and know the whole background. When readers start nitpicking, demanding to know (for instance) why two locations are a day’s journey apart in one book, and three days’ ride in another, I begin to understand why Conan Doyle attempted to throw Sherlock Holmes over the Reichenbach falls, and why Sax Rohmer repeatedly tried to burn, drown, or dismember Fu Manchu so thoroughly that even the publishers could not resurrect him for another book.
But for those who have followed, or tried to follow, the chronology of the Terrans on Darkover, I think of this book as coming perhaps thirty years before STAR OF DANGER while Lorill Hastur still ruled Comyn Council and while Valdir Alton, a younger brother of Ellemir and Callista, was away at Council. Readers of the earlier books will remember that Valdir’s adolescent son, Kennard, played an important part in STAR OF DANGER; that Valdir and his Terran foster-son Larry Montray reappeared in WINDS OF DARKOVER, about four years after the previous book. Kennard, grown to manhood, was an important character in THE BLOODY SUN.
Lerrys Ridenow—a grandson, perhaps, of the Damon in this book—appeared, with Regis Hastur, in THE PLANET SAVERS. Regis Hastur appeared again, with Lew Alton, son of Kennard, in THE SWORD OF ALDONES; and yet again, as a major character, in WORLD WRECKERS which was, so far, the last in chronology of the novels. Some general sense of the elapsed time may be gained by the knowledge that Desideria, who appears in WINDS OF DARKOVER as a girl of sixteen, appears (as a minor character) in WORLD WRECKERS as a woman of great age, possibly over a hundred years old.
The books were not written in chronological order. SWORD OF ALDONES, late in the series, was actually written first. DARKOVER LANDFALL, which dealt with how the planet was colonized, long before the coming of the Terran Empire, was actually written after WORLD WRECKERS, which otherwise was the last in the series. I prefer to think of it as a loosely interrelated group of novels with a common background—the Terran Empire against the world and culture of Darkover—and a common theme: the clash of two warring cultures, apparently irreconcilable and in spite of all, closely akin. If the books have any message at all, which I personally doubt, it is simply that for a man nothing of mankind is alien.
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[scanned anonymously]
[July 2003—v1 html proofed and formatted by Mariah for ELF]
Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Spell Sword
(Series: Darkover # 8)
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