The Holdfast ChroniclesWalk to the End of the WorldMotherlinesThe FuriesThe Conqueror's ChildThe Slave and the Free
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Tor Books
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Ballantine
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Walk to the End of the WorldAn ExcerptTwo young men hid in a storeroom discussing the future, while Captain Kelmz, secretly sworn to betray them both, looked grimly on. "I don't understand," said Servan D Layo. "Knowing your name and where to find you, why didn't your father have you killed a long time ago, to safeguard his own life?" Eykar Bek replied, "That's what I mean to ask him." Incredulously, D Layo said, "You want to search out your enemy so you can have a polite conversation with him?" Bek retorted, "I'm a man first and his son second. The proper approach of one rational being to another is through words, not mindless violence." "Spare me!" pleaded D Layo, holding up his hand. "I should have guessed: finding him is just another grand test you've set yourself — " "I'll never get to him alone," Bek continued, as if the other had not spoken. "I need your help, Servan." Captain Kelmz felt as if he were dreaming this talk of matters never openly spoken of in the Holdfast. But Eykar Bek was real enough. Though young, his face seemed bleached by bitter struggle, even to the icy irises of his eyes. The pallor of his skin was spectral, set off by jet-black hair. Sharpened, etched in black and white, his was a fanatic's face, as befitted one bent on smashing Holdfast law. D Layo's voice turned tender. "Suddenly, Eykar, it's you who are the tempter, and I the tempted." For him, Kelmz knew,the danger of the quest was its attraction. D Layo went on, "To find your father we would have to go south and try to pick up his trail at Bayo. It's years since he dropped out of sight — just about the time we got thrown out of school, wasn't it? And he'll have his guard up, once he hears that you're on his track." "If that worries you," said Eykar Bek, "then time has changed you a great deal more than it's changed me." "Eykar," D layo said, "it hasn't changed you at
all." He allowed one beat of silence to mark their agreement. Then
he pointed the hilt of his knife at Captain Kelmz. "Now, this old
hulk, here, has made a lot of trouble for me lately. Any objections to my
settling accounts with him before we start out?"
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Tor Books
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Tor Books
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The FuriesAn ExcerptSheel rode down into the ruins of 'Troi with two others whom she trusted in a fight; three Riding Women of the Grasslands, strangers in the Holdfast. From afar 'Troi looked like a blighted pasture from which the soil had all been blown by some monstrous wind, so that only blackened shards of masonry grew there now. Up close, it was a terrible place. Sheel was afraid the broken walls might collapse on her. The footing was a rough, hummocky quilt of ash, bone, and rubble that made her worry about laming her horse. She was deeply relieved to leave the place behind. They rode on uneasily, listening to the creak of saddle leather and the thud of the horses' hooves on alien ground. Before them lay a long, smooth slope of grass, islanded with young trees and dappled with the shadows of passing clouds. Sheel, a rider of the plains, had never been nervous of being in the open before, but this was different. She thought, "This place is empty in a way no place is emptyat home. This is a hungry emptiness. It has swallowed Alldera and her little army of Free Fems, and now it swallows us." Perhaps she and her companions would ride and ride but never find anyone living at all. One day they would simply ride into the sea — which she imagined as a rushing river with only one bank — and none of them would ever be heard of again. Haunted by these thoughts, she reproached herself: she should have come here alone and stopped the Free Fems' mad adventure herself, somehow, without endangering anyone else. Down river on the north side, they followed a broad trail paved with worn, flat stones. This would be a "road", she supposed, a silly thing; as if the Holdfast people had been so afraid of getting lost in their little patch of country that they had to mark its trails permanently so they could always find them again. The riders were making camp where the land dipped and good watch could be kept from a ridge above, when Ayana Maclaster came galloping back from scouting up ahead. She looked green around the mouth. "Come look," she croaked, and wheeled to return the way she'd come. With a heart full of foreboding, Sheel rode after her.
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The Conqueror's Child
Tor Books
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An ExcerptThat crippled stranger, my father, sat stiffly down on the ground across from me as I worked. I said, "Why are you here?" He said, "I asked to come, to advise you. Go home to the Grasslands, Sorrel. Your mother left you there for good reasons; Alldera knows what she's doing. The Holdfast is very dangerous now. There's great unrest among the men, dreams of revolt, of heroes appearing from the Wild to free them and make them the masters again." He looked around at the rocky hills. "You're too exposed here!" I said, "To what? A few dirty Slovene, shambling about with wooden bars fastened between their feet?" He tapped the iron cuff around his own ankle. "Once, you would have been the one to wear this, not I. The history of the Holdfast teaches one great lesson: Do not underestimate the lowly." I caught his hand and laid my other hand next to his, although he pulled back from me involuntarily. My hand was a good deal dirtier than his, from months of building in stone, while he'd been handling only his beloved old books in the Ancient library. "Not much alike," I said, letting him go. "Maybe I'm not your daughter after all. Why should you care what happens to me anyway? The other men wouldn't appreciate your concern. Some of them already want you dead, from what I've heard." He shrugged irritably. "Survival here has never been easy, not for anyone. But it's your safety we were discussing." "Look," I said, "I'm busy, I'm building something that's important to me. When I'm done, I'll leave. So you can tell those women they won't get anywhere treating me like a feckless girl, sending the only one of my parents who's around to come out here and nudge me toward what they want me to do. You're like some nervous old mare trying to round up a stray foal!" He picked up a stone and turned it in his hands, his thin fingers
nervously exploring its surfaces. "Our quarrels aren't yours,"
he said at last, and his pale eyes flashed a desperate glance at me.
"Go home! Take that troublesome child you brought, or leave him if
you must, but go, Sorrel — go soon!"
What Reviewers Have Said about
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"... this potent, thoughtful novel by a talented writer at the top
of her form clearly counts as one of the best SF novels of 1999."
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