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The Winds of Darkover

Marion Zimmer Bradley

a world divided 02 - a darkover novel

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He was standing on a stretch of soft grass; it was night, but it was not dark. All around him the nightflamed and roared with a great fire, reaching in tendrils of ravening flame far above his head. And in themidst of the flame there was a woman.

Woman?

She was almost inhumanly tall and slender, but girlish; she stood bathed in the flame as if standingcarelessly under a waterfall. She was not burning, not agonized. She looked merry and smiling. Theflames were licking around her face and her flame-colored hair. And then the girlish, merry face waveredand became supernally beautiful with the beauty of a great goddess burning endlessly in the fire, akneeling woman bound in golden chains…

He stumbled over his own feet leaving the office, and the face of the burning woman, in its inhumanecstasy, went with him in terror and amazement.

He thought,
 
what in the world
 
—
 
any world
—
 
has happened to me
?

And, in the name of all the gods of Earth, space and Darkover
—
 
why
?

Copyright © 1970 by Marion Zimmer Bradley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except forthe inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purelycoincidental.

Published Simultaneously inCanada .

An ACE Book, by arrangement with the author

Printed inU.S.A.

Page 1

DARKOVER novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley available in ACE editions:

STAR OF DANGER

THE BLOODY SUN

THE SWORD OF ALDONES

THE PLANET SAVERS

THE WORLD WRECKERS

I

^»

BARRON dumped the last of his gear into a duffel bag, pulled the straps tight, and said to nobody inparticular, “Well, that’s that and the hell with all of them.”

He straightened, taking a last look around the neat, tight little world of spaceport living-quarters. Built toconserve materials (it had been the first Terran building on Darkover, in the zone later to become Trade City), it had something in common with a spaceship’s cabin; it was narrow, bright, clean and cramped,the furniture functional and almost all built-in. It would have suited a professional spaceman perfectly. Ground crews were another matter; they tended to get claustrophobia.

Barron had complained as much as anyone else, saying the place might be a decent fit for two mice, ifone of them were on a stiff diet. But now that he was leaving it, he felt a curious pang, almosthomesickness. He had lived here five years.

Five years! I never meant to stick to one planet that long!

He hoisted the duffel bag to his shoulder and closed the door of his quarters for the last time.

The corridor was as functional as the living quarters; reference charts and maps papered the walls up tothe height of a tall man’s eye level. Barren strode along, not seeing the familiar charts, but he did cast abrief bitter glance at the dispatch board, seeing his name there in red on the dreaded rep-sheet. He hadfive reps—official reprimands—when seven would put one out of the Space Service for good.

And no wonder
, he thought.
 
I didn’t get any dirty deal; in fact, they went easy on me. Pure luck,and no credit to me, that cruiser and the mapping ship didn’t crash and blow the damnedspaceport right off Darkover, and half Trade  City  with them
 
!

He set his mouth tight. Here he was, worrying about demerits like a kid in school—and yet it wasn’tmerely that. Many people in Terran Space Service went through their whole twenty years without a singlerep—and he’d piled up five in one disastrous night.

Even though it wasn’t his fault.

Yes it was, damn it. Who else could I blame it on? I should have reported sick.

Page 2

But I wasn’t sick!

The rep-sheet read: gross neglect of duty, grave danger of causing accident to a landing spacecraft. Theyhad found him literally napping on duty.
 
But damn it, I wasn’t asleep either
 
!

Daydreaming?

Try telling them that. Try telling them that when your every nerve and muscle should have beenalert over the all-important dispatch board, you were
—
 
somewhere else. You were caught up in adeep dream, bewildered with colors, sights, sounds, smells, blazes of brilliance
 
.

You were leaning into an icy wind, under a deep purple sky, a blaze of red sunlight overhead
—
the Darkovan sun
—
 
the sun that the Terrans called The Bloody Sun. But you’d never seen it likethat, reflected in rainbow prisms through a great wall of crystalline glass. You heard your ownboots ringing on ice-hard stone
—
 
and your pulse was pounding with hate, and you felt the surgeof adrenaline in your blood. You broke into a run, feeling the hatred and blood-lust rise to a crestinside you; before you something reared up
—
 
man, woman, beast
—
 
you hardly knew or cared
—
and you heard your own snarl as a whip came crashing down and something screamed
—

The dream had dissolved in the thundering nightmare noise of klaxons, the all-quarters alarm ofsirens and whoopers and bells, the
WRECK
 
lights blazing everywhere, and your reflexes tookover. You’d never moved so fast. But it was too late. You had slammed the wrong button and thedispatch tower was fouled up by that all-important eight-second margin, and only a minor miracleof seat-of-the-pants navigation by the young captain of the mapping ship
 
—
 
he was getting threemedals for it
—
 
had saved the spaceport authority from the kind of disaster that waked people up

—
 
what people were left
—
 
in screeching nightmares for twenty years afterward
.

Nobody had wasted words on Barron since. His name on the rep-sheet had made him a pariah. He hadbeen told to vacate his quarters by 2700 that night and report for a new assignment, but nobodybothered telling him where. It was as simple as that—five years in Darkover Spaceport and seventeen inthe service had been wiped out. He didn’t feel especially mistreated. There wasn’t room in the Terran Spaceforce for that kind of mistake.

The corridor ended in an archway; a plaque, which Barron ignored after seeing it every day for years,told him he was now in Central Coordinating. Unlike the building where quarters were located, this onewas constructed of native Darkovan stone, translucent and white as alabaster, with enormous glasswindows. Through them he could see flaring, blue spaceport lights, the shapes of groundcraft and restingships, and, far beyond the lights, pale greenish moonlight. It was half an hour before dawn. He wishedhe’d stopped for some breakfast; then he was glad he hadn’t. Barron wasn’t thin-skinned, but the waythe men ignored him in the cafeteria would put anyone off his food. He hadn’t bothered eating much inthe last couple of days.

There was always theOldTown , the Darkovan part ofTradeCity where he sometimes slipped away forexotic food when he was tired of the standard fare of the quarters; there were not a few restaurantswhich catered to spacemen and tourists who came for “exotic delicacies.” But he hadn’t felt like trying topass the guards; he might have been stopped. They might have thought he was trying to escape an officialprocess. He wasn’t officially under arrest, but his name was mud.