Search Results for: legend

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like new Rome to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own time, flying the revolutionary ship, Hooded Swan. The rain forest of Chao Phrya seems a more hospitable place than the Halcyon Drift or the underground world of Rhapsody, scenes of Grainger’s previous adventures. But the colonists of the jungle planet are crazed and the indigenous population enigmatic; and Grainger must must undertake a mission that requires a lengthy journey on foot through the dense forest. His quest seems awkward, hazardous, and doomed to failure – and that’s before the giant spiders make their appearance!

The Hon. Vernon Lethaby is a flamboyant, headline-seeking exhibitionist with extravagant tastes and an allowance that barely covers his racing debts. In an unlikely partnership with middle-aged Canadian adventurer Joe ‘Digger’ Henderson, he strikes out for the Highlands of Scotland to hunt for Prince Charlie’s treasure, which, according to legend, is interred on the isle of Erran.

But Lathaby doesn’t trust his partner, and has taken out insurance to cover him against being swindled. Enter Miles Bredon, who is sent by his employer to ensure than neither of them defrauds the Indescribable Insurance Company.

An unidentified body burned in a garage, maps, photographs and a missing key sustain this clever tale of financial skulduggery until the final pages.

Once there was a Hero who confronted the dreaded Daggertooth and slew it. Unfortunately he was also slain by it – but the legend persisted. If it could be done once, then another Hero could be raised to do it again. Because the Daggertooth was dangerous to hibernating humanity. All people – all that anyone knew of – lived far underground in tunnels built for safety and hibernation. The Daggertooth was a mass killer – more so even than the hideous Oddlies, the outcasts of the darker tunnels.

So this is the story of John-A, the “vatkid” who was trained to be a second Hero. And the story of “trukid” Shirl who taught John-A what to do. And Threesum, the Oddlies’ leader, who scoffed at heroes. And the Elders who frowned at all the risky goings-on. This is the story of a mighty strange world and a mighty strange future…

In luck and out of luck, John Grimes was a living legend of the spaceways. He had been an officer of the service, he had been the victim of a mutiny, he had discovered lost worlds, he had served under strange masters and on strange ships, but he had never turned space pirate. Until this adventure.

How it happened was a complex story to begin with, but typical Grimes luck. How he became the terror of the star lanes developed, as usual, from his own efforts to make an honest living and other’s efforts to use him for devious diversions.

This is a story of the loot of the stars, of how Grimes graduated from operator of a space courier ship to master of a fleet of dreaded carriers of the skull and crossbones!

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots that link the cosmos are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own lifetime. The atmosphere of Mormyr is so dense that the surface is unreachable, which made it the ideal place for the alien Gallacellans to hide an ancient spaceship. Now they want it back. Grainger refuses, but when the Hooded Swan answers a mayday call, Grainger and his crew are trapped by a madman, who forces them to pursue the salvage anyway. Success will mean Grainger’s freedom from Titus Charlot, owner of the Hooded Swan; failure will mean the death of the inhabitants of an entire planet. And then the Gallacellans appear!

There should have been soft breezes scented with entrancing perfumes, the soothing warmth of a golden sun, lakes of wine and mountains of grain, trees adorned with fruit and bud and flower, shrubs bearing a profusion of glittering gems. Herbs and spices to provide freedom from pain, a return to youthful zest, an end of aging and decay. Salves and ointments and natural fungi to cure all physical ills. . .

For this was Earth, that planet of legend, the paradise for which all yearned and hungered to find. The world of joy and beauty and riches beyond the wildest dreams.

Instead Earl Dumarest found a landscape of unremitting hostility. Could this really be the fabled home world for which he had spent his entire life searching . . . ?



(First published 2008)

There is magic in the grand old tales that have survived through centuries of time. Even the names of the books have a ring that sets the blood pounding – THE VOLSUNG SAGA, THE SHAH-NAMAH, THE MABINOGIAN.

From all over the world, from all periods of ancient time, the great myths and heroic tales thunder down through the ages. Each country, each region has its legends. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, some often unknown scribe has set the tales down in permanent form.

In this volume, Lin Carter has gathered together samplings from this richest of all sources of adult fantasy and although their original names may sometimes be anonymous, there surely has never been such a pride of taletellers together at one time as we have in DRAGONS, ELVES AND HEROES.

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.

White-skinned, black-haired Sovaz is beautiful and wayward, yet seemingly soulless – as if vampirised by some unknown force. Wife of a very wealthy but older husband, she is the prize ornament of his treasure collection, yet she is toying with a naive young American lover. And while the faces of this doomed trio converge, somewhere outside the glowing casements a creature of darkness prepares to feed…

Here are a novel and twelve short stories encompassing all the richness and variety of Tanith Lee’s unique talent.

This fascinating and disturbing collection casts a new and chilling light on that ancient mythical creature, the mermaid… pinpoints the ultimate peril of mankind’s fascination with the domestic cat… sucks us into the pulsing horror of bricks and mortar with a life of their own… investigates the dark and marvellous legends of tree spirits, and the tantalising allure of other carnal obsessions.

He came to the Honey Garden looking for Cyrion. He was a man in grave danger, convinced only one man alive could help him. A man he had heard about in song and story. A man practically everyone knew something about. A man he had never met.

CYRION

Some said he was the stolen son of a western king, raised by nomads in the desert. A freelance swordsman, a sorcerer, a master of disguise, some said he attracted bizarre, uncanny events as some persons attract misfortune.

He with hair like the sky of earnest sunrise, his fair complexion, his whiplash reactions and quicksilver elegance was like a being from another world. A legend. A myth.

But was he real?

And was he for hire?

After their final battle, legend tells us, Arthur and his knights went to Lyonesse, the land under the sea. Now Lyonesse is threatened by a resurgence of the Dark Powers, those mindless malevolent forces that struggle to stop the course of History.

And Jim Eckert – the Dragon Knight – and his friends are called upon to stop them.

Arthur and his knights are proud; too proud to easily accept help from Jim Eckert and his allies. But they will have help – from Jim in his dragon form, from knight-in-armour Sir Brian Neville-Smyth, from the brilliant archer Dafydd ap Hywel, and from one small hobgoblin.

The result is a wild ride: Arthurian fantasy adventure as only Gordon R. Dickson could tell it.

The Merlin Codex brings together Robert Holdstock’s Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings in one superb omnibus.
Recounting a young Merlin’s epic story, The Merlin Codex moves through the classical world of Jason (of the Argonauts fame) and his wife Medea. Jealously guarding his gift as every act of magic shortens his life, Merlin weaves his plots across the centuries, showing us echoes of the man and the stories we know from Arthurian legend.
Robert Holdstock was unanimously hailed by critics as the best contemporary author of SF and Fantasy. By mixing Greek and Celtic mythologies happily around an immortal character, Holdstock once again touches on the great universal myths as he did so brilliantly in his Mythago Wood saga, going beyond the limits of Fantasy.

Lost in space…lost in time. There can be no more terrifying situation for any spaceman to be in, and such was the problem when Commodore Grimes’ Faraway Quest broke free from the mysterious Kinsolving’s Planet.

Because the universe was vast and they had been out beyond the Galactic Lens. Because time is infinite and they had slipped beyond their own epoch. Because in whatever universe they were in they could raise no etheric word, no telepathic beacon, no other star vessel.

But for John Grimes, a veritable Commodore Hornblower of the future space seas, there had to be a way back. The first step was to locate Earth, the launching place for all humanity.

But Earth turned out to be legend and myth and faith – and Grimes’ rebellious crew were to enact roles already fabled before they were born.

Among the six hundred thousand stars in the vast Arm of Stars, over six hundred planets had been seeded with human stock by the greatest feat of technology ever achieved, the Ship. And on each of these worlds, the memory of the Ship had faded into legend over the years.

The Ship, however, still endured, watching over the colonies on a cyclical and seemingly endless journey through time and space. But in its long odyssey, the Ship had somehow been damaged – it had become as conscious, and lonely, as any human being. And as it visited, again and again, each of the worlds it had seeded, it found tragedy in its wake. For the humans of the Arm of Stars were becoming more and more alien. Even worse, the Ship was beginning to change in ways its designers had never intended . . .

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds such as New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots have become the great heroes of the day. Grainger has become a legend in his own time, flying the prototype vessel of a new starship…. Having escaped from his contract with Charlot, Grainger is hounded by the Caradoc Commpany, who wants to extract everything from his brain about his former employer. But Charlot has other plans, and Grainger suddenly finds himself back on the Hooded Swan, leading a rescue mission for the Swan’s sister ship in the bizarre Nightingale Nebula. This last voyage proves costlier than the previous ones, as Grainger must risk not only his life – but his very soul!

THE EARTH’S REAL LANDLORDS ARE SURFACING. HERE. NOW…From the darkly fantastic worlds of H P Lovecraft’s world-famous Cthulhu Mythos comes a grimly compelling novel of the Ultimate War, between men – and monsters spawned in Hell!For millennia, men have strutted in puny pride over the fragile surface of the Earth, arrogantly proclaiming themselves masters of creation. But now their feeble investigations have disturbed the planet’s original rulers far beneath the globe’s crust. And mankind’s placid dreams are about to be wrenched into shattering nightmare.’They were here before man evolved. They are older than our oldest legends, predating the very dinosaurs. They call to use in our dreams and make us… do things!’They are THE BURROWERS BENEATH. And they’re surfacing right now. Right here…

Psychiatrist John Cunningham is secretly also “Jack Cannon”, author of popular horror novels. Under hypnotic regression, John’s patient Tony reveals a bizarre and horrifying tale of a “past life” lived on Tyneside in the 1950s, involving two schoolboys and a weird creature with paranormal powers lurking in caves beneath Tynemouth Castle. As John regresses Tony through earlier lives as far back as the 14th century it begins to seem that the local legend, captured in folksong, of a malevolent Lambton Worm may have had a basis in fact: that it was, in fact, the salamander of alchemical belief, summoned by an alchemist known as Raymond Lully, and possibly still locked below Tynemouth Castle And while John Cunningham is exploring Tony’s multiple personalities, he begins to experience personality problems of his own, as Jack Cannon beings to assert his own individuality.

According to legend, Zorn’s distant ancestors had vanquished fiery devils from the Demon Moon. Now, a thousand years later, that bloody red world looms closer every day.

But Zorn knows little of the past. For generations, his family have been Lords of Wolver Riding, flying their winged unicorns to protect the land from werewolves, wyverns and other deadly threats. As Zorn grows, he finds his world increasingly strange. Where did the werewolves come from? How did unicorns fly?

His questions end the day his evil uncle usurps the throne. Torn between ancient fears and modern science, wooed by a seductive temptress and plagued by a demonic priest, Zorn must unlock secrets shrouded in the mists of time – or watch everything he loves be consumed in the hellfire of the . . .

A STAR RISES IN THE SOUTH

When the foreigners confronted Sterren in Ethshar of the Spices he was uneasy; when they all but abducted him, taking him to an obscure kingdom in the south, he knew he was in a terrible predicament.

A predicament some might actually find appealing – he was by heredity the Ninth Warlord of Semma, least of the small kingdoms; he was a noble, and his rank afforded him material privileges, even in a place as insignificant and obscure as Semma.

But the office also carried certain terrible responsibilities: he was to win the war the stupid King had stirred up by his arrogance. Two larger and stronger Kingdoms were preparing to invade Semma.

And if the country lost, the first thing likely to be forfeit was the life of the Warlord.

And if it won . . . if it won, the fate and shape of Ethshar would change forever.

For deep in the south there are secrets of magic not even Sterren can imagine.


A LEGEND OF ETHSHAR

Psychic investigators have long been intrigued by the question of the existence of Elemental Spirits. Is it possible that Beings of incredible age wander unseen through the wild, lonely deserts, and drift above the peaks of barren, desolate mountains? Is there any connection between such speculation and the legends of ancient mythology? Could it be that the djinn and devas of India are only other interpretations of the same inexplicable phenomena?

Man feels that he has progressed beyond magic and even the most rational of civilised religions are undergoing periods of theological revolution and fundamental re-appraisal in the mid-60s.

But what if an Elemental Spirit invaded the safety and comfort of everyday life? What if something over than mankind burst like a tornado into the security of ordered human society? Could the logic and science of the Twentieth Century defeat the terrifying power of a thing which was alive yet not alive, dead yet undying?

Legends of the living dead have filled the pages of mythology since time immemorial. If ninety-nine point nine percent of the stories can be explained as hallucinations, tricks of the light, moving shadows or sheer imagination, a hard core of disquieting fact remains.

The vampire lives in the minds of men. When was it born? Perhaps in the dim distance of the remote past when the racial subconscious was being moulded. What keeps the vampire tradition alive in the mind of modern man? The two tiny words of “what if…?”

Leroy Thompson met a girl in a dark country lane. He offered her a lift. He met her again and again, but always by night. Then he looked in the driving mirror and saw only his own reflection… She cast no shadow in the headlights… She screamed and leapt from the car before he reached a bridge that crossed a moonlit stream… What if?

In the culture of the galaxy, the Star-Pilots of the starships that link the cosmos together have become the great heroes of the day. Grainger, who has become a legend in his own lifetime, is drafted to fly the prototype (the Hooded Swan) of a new ship that could revolutionize space travel. The members of the ultra-ascetic Church of the Exclusive Reward have colonized a number of marginal worlds to exclude themselves from galactic society. On Rhapsody, church members lead a completely subterranean existence. Even closed societies have their rebels, however, so when a major scientific discovery emerges from the caves of the dark planet, everything there falls apart. If Grainger can secure a share in the coming bonanza, he could buy back his freedom from Titus Charlot. Before he can do that, however, he has to find some way of just staying alive . . .

It has been one hundred years since the Archangel Alleluia and the mortal Caleb discovered the truth about the god of Samaria. Legend says they left a record of that truth, though no document has ever been found. In time, an underground cult arose, seeking to find again what Alleluia found. But the reigning Archangel Bael called down the wrath of Jovah upon the cult, and hundreds died in a hail of thunderbolts.

Yet some survived.

Among them is Tamar, child of cultists, raised in captivity among the angels. Tamar believes that the Alleluia Files exist. She is determined to find them, and to free the people of Samaria from their fear of Jovah. In her search, she encounters the angel Jared, one of the members of his own kind who have come to question the wisdom of Bael. Together, these two uneasy allies will journey the length and breadth of Samaria, risking their lives and the lives of their comrades, seeking a truth that will alter the face of Samaria forever…

Thousands of years into the future man has completely destroyed a technology-based society and lives a tribal existence, worshipping the ‘brain’-cases of long-rusted robots. Here and there pockets of knowledge remain, and young Tom Cushing lives in one such university.

His imagination fired by reading of the fabled ‘Place of Going to the Stars’ in an ancient manuscript, Tom sets out on a long odyssey to find out if the legend is true. His journey encompasses excitement, danger and some strange and colourful companions who commune with plants, can sense life and include the very last robot.

But nothing he meets along the way compares with what he and his motley group find at Thunderhead Butte, the Place of Going to the Stars, their journey’s end. Here wonder abounds almost as at the edge of the universe. A new challenge, for man to rediscover his destiny, to fulfil his heritage and recover his lost knowledge.