Search Worlds Without End

Once, Nor'Dyren had been a planet ruled by technology and progress. Now, it was primitive, sinking into poverty and despair, and it was Earthman Tollan Bailey's mission to find out why. His investigation was just the beginning of an amazing adventure into the past... and a grim battle against sinister political forces dedicated to preventing change at any cost.

Could Bailey save the planet from oblivion? And could he save himself?

The report was correct as far as it went. There was no intelligent life on the planet. No one thought to look up...

The Light Dancers... From the dawn of time they sailed the cloudplains of Selmarri, soaring on wings of light, until they discovered immortality - and traded their wings for eternity in a crystal universe the size of a transistor. Aeons later, when the bloodblossom plague threatens to reduce humankind's life-span to nine Earth-years, the "empty planet" Selmarri is chosen as quarantine for the galaxy: and the exile Verron and the Light Dancer Aleida respeak the sun-leaping cloudcry in their pursuit of life's most ancient dream.

It is the time of kalinerre - when young men and women of Aurlanus, chosen by lot, must leave their island home to be tested by the sea. Genetically engineered descendants of a human race from a world beyond the sky, they surrender to the mercies of the vast and terrifying ocean. Most return from their initiation. Some do not.

Queen Amelyor's city was in danger. She alone possessed the power to sound the horns - beckoning the sea mammals to guide their fishing boats to safety. But now, the Queen's powers were waning...

And so, Keiris, her only son, ventured forth into the sea to find his long lost twin sister. Perhaps she possessed the gift and could save the city.

From the haunting strains of an ancient song to the forsaken isles of mermaids and watery creatures, Keiris soon uncovered the mystery of his heritage - and a strange new destiny that called to him from the wonderous depths of the great sea itself.

The girl Dara was as plain as the buildings of the simple folk, as gray as the land they called their own. Yet there was a fire behind her eyes. Unbidden, her thoughts took flight to the world her grandmother knew, when water and wind had names, and the people had souls that sang. Frightened, she pushed this world away...

Then one day, the world came to her. Danger, in the form of a rider, splendid in gold and red. Wisdom, in the vision of Ilijhari, the mountain folk who could see through the eyes of their birds.

And Destiny, for those with the wings to ride the air.

The visit. The three ships materialized over Puget Sound one evening at year's end. They appeared in the skies of Tacoma with a roar that shattered windows and stopped hearts.

They were like nothing seen or dreamed, improbable monsters of dull, scarred metal, incredibly filling the sky. Tacoma had a brief, shocked glimpse of their solid reality. Then, ghostly silent after the initial roar, they shuddered away.

The ships moved in awesome silence across the western portion of the continent, darkening the skies of a dozen cities and a hundred towns, briefly blotting out the starlight of late December. They zigged and zagged, seeming to grope, to search.

But for what?

Cadet Jahna arrives on Nelding, a backwater planet, as a volunteer in an interstellar peace corps. The First Fathers of Nelding, a brooding, repressive group, requested her particularly - surprisingly, for she is young and unexperienced. Her first impressions are gloomy. Jahna is delivered to the huge fog fortress, Pengalen, where she learns, first, that she is to be assigned the care of infants and, secondly, from Becklord, the mysterious but attractive lord of Pengalen, that there is another culture on Nelding, a forest community called Tentback which is considered unclean and inhuman by the First Fathers and their followers.

Tentback is inhabited by people called mock-dirads, the mutated descendants of human colonists, born deformed and cast out by the First Fathers. They have mysteriously become protean, have imitated the native dirads and grown to look like them. Becklord sees the danger of becoming too alien to preserve civilization of any kind and pland that Jahna become a template, a pattern for imitation for female infaants (for the ability to imitate is lost in early childhood). Becklord is opposed by the First Fathers, by certain mock-dirads, and by Zuniin, an insane Tentback mother, tortured by hatred and fear, who will kill Jahna before letting her "steal" Tentback babies.

Conflict increases, culminating in violent warfare. Jahna must choose to stay in Tentback and become the Starmother or retreat to civilization.

Humans came to Destiny, and the adults conceived during a sunstorm. Only six of three-hundred odd lived. But each of them was strange. The local natives braved hardships and became dour and counted the Sunwaifs as punishment for sins. This is the story of the confrontation between the children and the humans made cynical by fate.

Who was Darkchild, and for what purpose had he come to the valley?

Kira was a barhona's daughter destined to wield the power of the sun over her peaceful people. Her way was hard, but she knew her heritage and her future...

Then, in the dead of winter, a ship brought Darkchild. He was not of her race, he had no memory. How could he pose a threat to her people that the Arnimi assured her he did? Was Darkchild all that he seemed?

Keva leaves the safety of her home in order to set off on a quest to discover the meaning of the strange dreams which haunt her.

Reyna, a princess, and the hunter Juaren share a dream that sets them in conflict with a greedy enemy who seeks their very souls.