Search Results for: king-of-the-dead

The secrets of Asorbes – and of the alien Pharaoh who ruled there!

All bowed their heads before the golden splendour of Khasathut’s pyramid – and before his atrocities. Slaves and princes alike feared his awesome powers, which came from far beyond the stars. Only Khai was not blinded by the glories of the Pharaoh, for not only had he seen the horrible secrets of the pyramid but he had lived to escape their deadly grasp!

A man of two worlds, out of two ages, Khai fought to win the hand of the Queen Ashtarta and to vanquish the devil-king and his wraiths of hell. And he kept to an eternal faith: that one day the Golden Ones would return from their journey through the heavens bringing justice…

A Viking temple. A Viking ship. Both preserved in the clinging, black mud of the North Yorkshire estuary. Press and TV watch over the archaeologists’ shoulders as past and present merge.

And while huge, death-cold creatures stalk and destroy through the blizzards of an eerily early winter, modern computer science and the dark night-knowledge of the old Norse gods disinter a terrible truth about a past that is sleeping, not dead.

“Who was your father?” the mutant asked Dale Kesley. And try as he might, Kesley could not remember; his past was an utter blank. But he knew one thing – the answer to his life’s riddle lay in Antarctica, the once-frozen continent, now an earthly paradise surrounded by an impenetrable barrier.

But how to get there? The only means of transportation were the spindly six-legged mutant horses. And it was suicide for Kesley to travel on the American continents. Two immortal dictators had set king-size rewards for his capture – dead or alive! But somewhere in the two continents there was someone who would help him, someone he had to find. The future of the world depended on his success.



(First published 1956)

What if there were an Afterworld? Not Heaven or Hell in the conventional sense, but a place where everyone who has ever lived reawakens when they die, to live again and die again and live again, seemingly forever. This is the premise of Robert Silverberg’s brilliantly inventive new fantasy novel. The central character is the legendary warrior-king Gilgamesh, who has been in the Afterworld longer than almost anyone else save the Hairy Men from before the Flood, and who in recent centuries (insofar as you can count time) has seen it change beyond recognition, as the newly dead from industrial times import their machinery, their weaponry and their attitudes. Gilgamesh’s adventures in the course of the novel take him to the Afterworld realms of other quasi-mythical figures like Prester John and Simon Magus, bring him into contact with such figures from more recent history as Walter Ralegh and Pablo Ruiz (known to some as Picasso), and eventually send him in search of a gateway which is rumoured to exist somewhere in the land of the dead – a gateway which leads back to the land of the living.

The years since first he gained the Starburst Crown have been difficult ones for Coronal Lord Prestimion and the vast, unfathomable realm he rules. But finally peace has been restored to Majipoor. And now it is time for Prestimion to name the able Prince Dekkeret as his succeeding Coronal and to descend to the Labyrinth as Pontifex. But a power from a dark past that both men believed was dead is stirring once again – an evil more potent and devastating than either leader dares to remember.

The Potters of Firsk includes the majority of Vance’s ‘Magnus Ridolph’ stories, previously collected in The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph. In the VIE edition this book is titled Gadget Stories.
Contents: Planet of the Black Dust, Dead Ahead (“Ultimate Quest”), Hard Luck Diggings, Sanatoris Short-cut, The Unspeakable McInch, The Howling Bounders, The King of Thieves, The Sub-standard Sardines, To B or Not to C or to D (“Cosmic Hotfoot”), Spa of the Stars, The Enchanted Princess (“The Dreamer”), The Potters of Firsk, The Visitors (“Winner Lose All”), Plagian Siphon (“The Uninhibited Robot”; “The Planet Machine”), Dover Spargill’s Ghastly Floater, Sabotage on Sulfur Planet, Three Legged Joe, Four Hundred Blackbirds, Sjambak, Parapsyche, Sail 25 (“Gateway to Strangeness”; “Dust of Far Suns”).

All Jack Vance titles in the SFGateway use the author’s preferred texts, as restored for the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), an extensive project masterminded by an international online community of Vance’s admirers. In general, we also use the VIE titles, and have adopted the arrangement of short story collections to eliminate overlaps.

The Lyonesse sequence evokes the Elder Isles, is a baroque land of pre-Arthurian myth now lost beneath the Atlantic, where powerful sorcerers, aloof faeries, stalwart champions, and nobles eccentric, magnanimous, and cruel pursue intrigue among their separate worlds . . .

King Aillas of Troicinet defends the peace of the Elder Isles against both the Ska marauders who once enslaved him and the wicked King Casmir. While organizing the unruly barons in the frontiers of his land, Aillas goes out of his way to capture the lovely Ska noblewoman who once stung him with her disregard. When he gets separated from his men, his dream of forcing the lady’s recognition becomes the toil of dragging a defiant captive across lands governed by Casmir’s henchmen.

Meanwhile, the world of magic has gone on the move. The concentrated malice of the witch Desmëi has manifested as a green pearl, breeding lust and envy and death; and a sorcerer in Casmir’s employ abducts the princess Glyneth, in a bid to draw Aillas and friends on a hopeless rescue mission across a bizarre and deadly alternate world . . .



(First published in 1985)

It was a changed world. No longer did the black monks of the Christian Church own half of England and extend their deadly domain over their flock. No longer did the murderous Ragnarssons and their Viking hordes ravage the shires unopposed. Now, in the year 867 AD, those who wished to be Christian were free to worship without the heavy yoke of the ever-hungry Church. Those who did not could follow the Asgarth Way, the Norse religion that paid homage to the gods of Asgard: Othin, Thor, Frey…and Rig. Rig, the patron – perhaps the father? – of Shef Sigvarthsson. Whose new weapons and battle strategy had defeated both the battle-hardened Vikings and the Frankish knights of Pope Nicholas’ failed Crusade.

While enemies plotted, Shef left England by ship, to avoid the wedding of his ally, Alfred of Wessex, to his childhood love, Godive. Shipwrecked on the Frisian Coast he begins a journey that will keep him away from England for months and years, and add more legends to his already myth-shrouded life.

In One King’s Way Harry Harrison Continues the story of Shef Sigvarthsson, god-chosen warrior and mystic. From the Vikings of the North Sea to the scheming priests of Germany, from the frozen northern lands to the snow-covered Finnish tundra, he fights his way towards overwhelming kingship. While his supernatural allies and enemies engage in a shadowy battle for his future. This is historical fantasy of the highest order, from a giant of the genre.

He wears the guise of a Necromancer: the black cloak, the broad-rimmed hat, the gauze mask painted with a death’s head. But raising the dead is the least of his Talents. He is a wild card that threatens the True Game itself. Demon, Doyen, Dragon and Tragamor, Sorcerer, Seer, Armiger and King – take your places. Let the Game begin.

The hill below the fortress of Taurovinda, stronghold of Urtha, High King of the Cornovidi, is coming alive: the Otherworldly realm of the Shadows of Heroes are claiming the land as their own. But this time their actions are driven by a force that is darker and older than even the oldest among the ghosts. Who or what is raising the Dead? Merlin, a temporary resident in the fortress, must answer that question if this time of kings and lovers is to be saved. Jason’s wonderful ship, Argo, has returned, drawn back by her own guilty past, and a dreadful secret that she will reveal only to Merlin. Argo holds the key to the mystery. And Niiv, the bewitching, beautiful Northlands enchantress, is working her way even closer into Merlin’s charms.

This is a journey that will take Merlin back in history, and to a fabled island of legend. Love is in the air. But at a price.

Killed by the power of the god Zezeth, his true father, Lionwolf has been cast into a bleak and icy hell lit just by a cold blue sun. Here he and others of the living dead must wage endless combat and war, to appease the whim of a deathly King whose face is made of stone. But when Lionwolf encounters the King’s wife, she is none other than the beautiful, god-fashioned Chillel, his own former lover – and nemesis.

As Lionwolf struggles in the toils of Hell, elsewhere in the hell-cold ice-age of the mortal earth, men and women work out their own destinies. An empire has fallen. Ru Karismi, Capital of the Kings, has been abandoned to the poisons of the White Death. Reivers cross the lands of the Jafn and the Ruk, preying wherever they wish.

Against this unsettled backdrop, Jemhara the sorceress determines to save the Magician Thryfe from a dire self-inflicted punishment, and Saphay, now a goddess of the far north, seeks to lead her people to a new world.

Yet Seseth’s violent hadred shadows all – and from the depths of an ice-locked sea his other terrifying son, the mountainous whale-leviathan Brightshade, is once more rising for vengeance…

As the war which consumes Dervelai drags on, Algarve’s reserves become more and more stretched. King Mezentio undertakes war on many fronts, and his main armies become sucked in to the huge landmass of Unkerlant, their main enemy. As conquered races are inducted into the Algarvian army, their fighting edge softens, and swift victory becomes ever more necessary, leading to the sacrifice of more and more Kaunians to allow Algervian mages to create ever stronger blood sorcery. Meanwhile, the mad King Swemmel of Unkerlant orders the death of thousands of his own subjects in an attempt to match the magecraft of Algarve. But the most deadly magic of all is taking place on a small island, where the ultimate weapon is coming slowly to fruition.

A terrible civil war was tearing apart the kingdom of Detina, a land which could no longer be half serf and half free. When the new ruler, King Avram, decided to liberate the blond serfs upon which the northern provinces depended, the north rebelled, taking Grand Duke Geoffrey as their King.


Neither side expected an easy victory. The south was larger and wealthier, but the north had better soldiers and more powerful wizards. Led by officers riding unicorns, supplied by flying carpets, both sides had clashed for three bloody years, as the tide slowly turned against the north.


But the war was far from over: The north had found a far more competent general, and he was determined to hold Peachtree Province. When the southrons attacked, they faced formidable obstacles both natural and manmade, as well as the deadly repeating crossbows of the northern rebels and the sorcerous storm and lightning wielded by the northern wizards.


Still, the very survival of Detina as one united realm was at stake, and King Avram’s forces had no choice but to attack, no matter what the odds, no matter how desperate the situation…

The North shall rise again!
When Avram became King of Detina, he announced his plan to liberate the blond serfs – and immediately plunged the kingdom into a long and bloody civil war, setting brother against brother. The northern provinces, dependent on the labour of their serfs, seceded, choosing Avram’s cousin, Grand Duke Geoffrey, as their king. To save the kingdom, Avram sent armies clad in grey against the north, battling Geoffrey’s army, arrayed in blue.
Though King Avram held more land and wealth than Geoffrey, Geoffrey’s men were better soldiers and the north had more powerful wizards. Still, as the war raged on, the greater population and the superior organisation of the South began to tell and the tide turned against the north.
Even so, the war is far from over. The armies of the sough must now battle the north on its own ground – ground which will prove treacherous and deadly…

The year is 1610. Continental Europe is briefly at peace after years of war, but Henri IV of France is planning to invade the German principalities. In England, only five years earlier, conspirators nearly succeeded in blowing up King James I and his Parliament. The seeds of the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War are visibly being sown, and the possibility for both enlightenment and disaster abounds.

But Valentin Rochefort, duelist and spy for France’s powerful financial minister, could not care less. Until he is drawn into the glittering palaces, bawdy back streets, and stunning theatrics of Renaissance France and Shakespearean London in a deadly plot both to kill King James I and to save him. For this swordsman without a conscience is about to find himself caught between loyalty, love, and blackmail, between kings, queens, politicians, and Rosicrucians, and the woman he has, unknowingly, crossed land and sea to meet.

Pursued by the interplanetary police for a crime he did not commit, space traveller Tyg is forced down on the planet Storm, where he finds a revolution brewing among the Tadda against King Caiman, the planet’s tyrannical ruler.
He must prove his innocence of the crime with which he is charged, as he fights for survival beneath the Storm’s seething oceans, where the very existence of the Tadda is threatened by the deadly undersea volcano known as NEPTUNE’S CAULDRON.

The beautiful Dedo Nyneve’s innocent tales of a land called Camelot have spawned a real-life cast determined to choose their own fates, yet each move draws them closer to catastrophe. And as the many happentracks of the universe narrow to a dangerous few, the actions of every sorcerer, man, and living creature will determine whether the great god Starquin lives or dies.
For the first time in remembered history, humans and gnomes find themselves sharing the same Earth happentrack. But King Arthur has larger concerns as he watches the society he rules spiralling toward ultimate destruction. Little does he know that the evil Mogan Le Fay has been working her treacherous magic to split the happentracks wide open – a deadly betrayal that could spell the end of Camelot.
With the ma possible futures swiftly shrinking to one last destiny too awful to contemplate, courageous Fang the gnome joins forces with Arthur and Nyneve to manipulate history in a final confrontation of wills and worlds. The last move is Fang’s, as he unravels the strands of time to keep his clan from the brutal vision of Starquin’s end.

There’s no place like home…

It was a pretty good life for a spellsinger from L.A. He’d battled demons, fought deadly Plated Folk, even met a socialist dragon and survived. Now Jon-Tom was quite happy to settle into domestic bliss with the fiery Talea, study magic, and practice spellsinging on his duar. But the magic instrument is broken when Jon-Tom protects the wizard Clothahump from thieves and he must set out across the Glittergeist Sea to find the one person who can fix it. With the irrepressible Mudge the Otter as a travelling companion, only the unexpected can happen. But cannibal muskrats, ogres, and a fierce pirate king parrot must seem ordinary indeed when Jon-Tom finds a way back to Earth – and he must choose which world is home.

Eight hundred years have passed since King Connavar of the Rigante and his bastard son, Bane, defeated the invading army of Stone. In that time, Connavar has become a legend, and the Rigante have lost the freedom so many gave their lives to preserve. A conquered people, they live and die under the iron rule of the Varlish, their culture all but destroyed.

One woman remains who follows the ancient paths once trod by the

Rigante. She is the Wyrd of Wishing Tree Wood, and she alone knows the nature of the evil soon to be unleashed on a doomed and unsuspecting world.

In a perilous land, facing an uncertain destiny, she pins her initial hopes on two men: Jaim Grymauch, the giant Rigante fighter, a man haunted by his failure to save the friend he loved from betrayal, and Kaelin Ring, a youth whose deadly talents will earn him the enmity of all Varlish. One will become the Ravenheart, an outlaw leader whose daring exploits will inspire the Rigante. The other will forge a legend and light the fires of rebellion.

The Wyrd knows that ultimately all hopes will rest on a third man. Of the bloodline of Connavar the King, he will need to overcome generations of fear and hatred if he is to achieve his destiny. For he is a Varlish nobleman, and – worse – the son of the Rigante’s greatest enemy . . .

Read by Adjoh Andoh
(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group

When Sam Partlett joined the staff at the Institute of Pomology at King’s Weltham, he brought nothing but discord. But it was not Sam who was found dead at the Institute, throat slashed with one of the laboratory razors.

In the close-knit scientific community, Inspector Day quietly sets to work to probe the secrets of people busy with different experiments – but has someone carried out an experiment with death?

‘One of the best contemporary writers of civilised murder mysteries’ The Times

The third of the Tiger Mann adventures calls on the master of counter-espionage to act as unofficial bodyguard to a visiting Arab king.

The American government is courting the visiting ruler for reasons of oil. The Communists want the king, too – but they’d prefer him dead. So Tiger has to outwit the principal Far East Communist agent, counteract Communist propaganda being fed to the king, entertain the monarch’s beautiful fiancé …

… and still keep his lovely Rondine happy.

Detective Constable Henry Campion turns lone avenger when his childhood friend and colleague DC Fred Jordan is shot dead by a gangster who is spared the death sentence. And Campion is convinced there were two killers. To try to catch the second, Campion goes undercover as a spiv in a King’s Cross nightclub, the Full Moon.

But Campion’s adventures at the Full Moon draw him deeper into gangland, and closer to the woman of his dreams – his dead friend’s widow . . .

But is it love, or is Anne Jordan using Campion for her own ends?

Modern man is not fascinated by ancient Egypt without good reason. The Nile Civilisation is not only interesting because of its age but because of its mystery. Who can completely answer the riddle of the Sphinx, even today? What strange mysteries are still buried among the measurements of the Great Pyramid? How many wonders are yet incarcerated in the Valley of the Kings?

Johnny Cole and Chris Saunders set out for the Eye Temple at Luxor. The discovered evidence of a strange cult, hitherto quite unsuspected. The search took them to Thebes and beyond. From Necropolis to Necropolis they traced the terrifying ancient truth to learn at last that the Eye-god still lived, deadly, ruthless, malevolent.

Would twentieth century weapons work on a being older than time itself?

If not, how did a mortal fight against an evil deity?

By the vow of her father and her own desire, Raederle was pledged to Morgon, Riddle-Master of Hed. But a year had passed since Morgon disappeared on his search for the High One at Erlenstar Mountain, and rumors claimed he was dead.

Raederle set out to learn the truth for herself, though her small gift of magic seemed too slight for the perils she must face. The quest led through strange lands and dangerous adventures. Only her growing powers enabled her at last to reach Erlenstar Mountain. And there she discovered what she could not bear to accept.

Accompanied by Deth, the High One’s Harper, she fled. And behind them came a pursuer whose name was Morgon, bent on executing a grim destiny upon Raederle and Deth.

Her only hope lay in summoning the Hosts of the Dead, led by the King whose skull she bore…