Adventures in the Mageworlds

DANGEROUS QUESTIONS!

"Have you got Warhammer's papers?" he asked.

"Yes," Beka said. She reached into the right-side pocket of her jacket for the miniature blaster that always lived there, and put the business end of the little weapon against the back of his neck.

He froze. Then, with infinite caution, he lifted both hands and placed them flat against Amsroto's hull.

Beka started breathing again. "Now," she said. "It's time you told me what your name really is, and how you wound up with a Mageworld scoutcraft parked in your docking bay..."

THE PRICE OF THE STARS

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SNEAK ATTACK!

Elimax raised his blaster. The ugly snarl of the weapon filled the cramped space as he sent two high-power beams on tight focus into the heads of the sleepers. In the silence that followed, another sound erupted—the buzz of a single-shot needler, fired at close range. Elimax crumpled forward; his blaster fell to the deck. Beka stepped out of the shadowed corner where she'd stood watching...

STARPILOT'S GRAVE

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EMERGENCY LIFTOFF!

"Portmaster, this is Warhammer. Request permission to lift ship."

"Negative, Warhammer. Permission to lift denied. Report with your entire crew to the Portmaster's office."

"Unable to comply. Request permis—" The sudden tug of a tractor beam cut him off midword. The 'Hammer began to lurch and sway as the beam kept on pulling the ship downward. LeSoit could feel the strength members of the 'Hammer's frame vibrating. He reached for the console and pulled on the forward nullgravs. Nothing happened—only the steady throb of overstressed metal.

LeSoit hit the console again. With a tremendous deep-throated roar, the heavy realspace engines came on. Power that should have driven Warhammer's mass up to near-lightspeed poured out of the ship's engines, turning the deckplates of the bay to slag beneath them. All over the console, warning lights burned red. "This is it—either we shake apart fighting their beam, or we break free..."

BY HONOR BETRAY'D

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DANGEROUS LIAISON!

"You've made a name for yourself, Captain Metadi, and not merely on Gyffer and Innish-Kyl—the newsreaders on Galcen talk about you as well. They say you are something more than a successful pirate—"

"Privateer," he corrected. "I bear letters of marque and reprisal."

"My apologies, Captain," Perada said, her expression unruffled. "Privateer. If the newsreaders don't lie you have proven yourself able to meld independent raiders into a fleet and carry the war to the enemy."

"Enemy?" Jos Metadi shook his head. "No. Enemies are personal. I take prizes—rich ones—and I take them for the goods and merchandise they carry. If your sources are any good, they should have mentioned that I don't fight warships if I can help it."

"You fight when you must, and you win when you fight." Her voice remained composed. "I have decided. You are the man who will return with me to Entibor and, once there, make a warfleet for me."

"You've decided, have you?"

THE GATHERING FLAME

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TWO AGAINST THE GALAXY!

They were dragging him now to a parked hovercar. One of them -- Kolpag, the blaster man -- slid into the driver's position and switched the machine on. It rose, humming, on its nullgravs, and hung there vibrating gently.

The other man shoved Jens onto the front seat beside the driver. Jens fell heavily backward onto his bound wrists, and the man who had dumped him -- Ruhn, if the blaster man/driver was Kolpag -- started to walk back to the rear passenger compartment, where he would sit behind Jens.

Time to go out with style, Jens thought; now or never-- and smashed his foot sideways into the driver's ribs.

Kolpag lost his breath in an explosive whuff and half-fell from his still-open door -- twisting the hovercar's control yoke to the left and dragging it all the way out to reverse as he went down. The car spun backward and to the right with startling speed, increasing its angular velocity as it pivoted. The side of the vehicle took the second gunman in the midsection, crushing him between its metal mass and the unyielding granite of the wall. An explosion of blood flew from his mouth and spattered the window above Jens' head.

THE LONG HUNT

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A NOVEL OF THE MAGEWORLDS

The star systems of the Mageworlds are linked by magic. Only when trained Mages have found a Way to a new world can the great colonizing and trading starships follow. But beyond the furthest worlds is the great gap, beyond which, hint the legends, lie vast, rich human worlds long lost to the Mages' trade.

Now the most powerful Mage-circle ever is determined to walk to those worlds, to reunite humanity's sundered branches and make a fortune in the process. And young Arekhon sus-Khalgath, scion of the most powerful of the clans of starship builders, has left his inheritance to join them.

But immense forces are arrayed against them. Blood will be spilled, and dynasties thrown down, before the worlds of mankind are again united. For the first time in living memory, the Mages will go to war--with themselves.

THE STARS ASUNDER

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A NOVEL OF THE MAGEWORLDS

Ten years ago, Arekhon sus-Khalgath sus-Peledaen abandoned this native planet for a new life on the far side of the Gap Between -- the starless rift separating the Eraasian worlds from the rest of the galaxy. On the planet Entibor, he found shelter and domestic tranquilty with his old love, Elaeli Inadi, at the price of what he had left behind: a dispersed and shattered Mage-Circle, an estranged brother who had tried to kill him, and a homeworld on the cusp of massive cultural upheaveal.

Now the bill is coming due, and Arekhon finds himself impelled homeward by strange dreams and prophetic visions. The Great Working -- the effort to do the unthinkable and reunite the galaxy long sundered by the Gap Between -- remains incomplete, left unfinished in the aftermath of the dissolution of Arekhon's Mage-Circle. But too much energy and too many lives have been poured into the Working already, and it cannot end so long as any of the Circle members remain alive and bound to it.

Home, unfortunately, isn't a safe place for Arekhon to be at the moment. For Eraasi has changed -- and the great fleet-families at the center of Eraasian culture are girding for war.

A WORKING OF STARS