Hunt the Space-Witch! Seven Adventures in Time and Space Read online

  A flicker of recognition crossed Moaris’s seamed face, and he smiled coldly. “I seem to remember,” he said.

  A gong sounded.

  “We mustn’t keep the Seigneur waiting,” said Moaris. “Come.”

  Together they went forward to the Grand Chamber of the Seigneur of Borlaam.

  Moaris entered first, as befitted his rank, and took his place to the left of the monarch, who sat on a raised throne decked with violet and gold. Herndon knew protocol; he knelt immediately.

  “Rise,” the Seigneur commanded. His voice was a dry whisper, feathery-sounding, barely audible and yet commanding all the same. Herndon rose and stared levelly at Krellig.

  The monarch was a tiny man, dried and fleshless; he seemed almost to be a humpback. Two beady, terrifying eyes glittered from a wrinkled, world-weary face. Krellig’s lips were thin and bloodless, his nose a savage slash, his chin wedge-shaped.

  Herndon let his eyes rove. The hall was huge, as he had expected; vast pillars supported the ceiling, and rows of courtiers flanked the walls. There were women, dozens of them: the Seigneur’s mistresses, no doubt.

  In the middle of the hall hung suspended something that looked to be a giant cage completely cloaked in thick draperies of red velvet. Some pet of the Seigneur’s probably lurked within: a vicious pet, Herndon theorized, possibly a Villidonian gyrfalcon with honed talons.

  “Welcome to the court,” the Seigneur murmured.

  “You are the guest of my friend Moaris, eh?”

  “I am, sire,” Herndon said. In the quietness of the hall his voice echoed cracklingly.

  “Moaris is to provide us all with some amusement this evening,” remarked the monarch. The little man chuckled in anticipatory glee. “We are very grateful to your sponsor, the Lord Moaris, for the pleasure he is to bring to us this night.”

  Herndon frowned. He wondered obscurely whether he was to be the source of amusement. He stood his ground unafraid; before the evening had ended, he himself would be amused at the expense of the others.

  “Raise the curtain,” Krellig commanded.

  Instantly two Toppidan slaves emerged from the corners of the throne room and jerked simultaneously on heavy cords that controlled the curtain over the cage. Slowly the thick folds of velvet lifted, revealing, as Herndon had suspected, a cage.

  There was a girl in the cage.

  She hung suspended by her wrists from a bar mounted at the roof of the cage. She was naked; the bar revolved, turning her like an animal trussed to a spit. Herndon froze, not daring to move, staring in sudden astonishment at the slim, bare body dangling there.

  It was a body he knew well.

  The girl in the cage was the Lady Moaris.

  Seigneur Krellig smiled benignly; he murmured in a gentle voice, “Moaris, the show is yours, and the audience awaits. Don’t keep us waiting.”

  Moaris slowly moved toward the center of the ballroom floor. The marble under his feet was brightly polished and reflected him; his boots thundered as he walked.

  He turned, facing Krellig, and said in a calm, controlled tone, “Ladies and gentlemen of the Seigneur’s court, I beg leave to transact a little of my domestic business before your eyes. The lady in the cage, as most of you, I believe, are aware, is my wife.”

  A ripple of hastily hushed comment was emitted by the men and women of the court. Moaris gestured, and a spotlight flashed upward, illuminating the woman in the cage.

  Herndon saw that her wrists were cruelly pinioned and that the blue veins stood out in sharp relief against her pale arms. She swung in a small circle as the bar above her turned in its endless rotation. Beads of sweat trickled down her back and stomach, and the harsh, sobbing intake of her breath was audible in the silence.

  Moaris said casually, “My wife has been unfaithful to me. A trusted servant informed me of this not long ago: she has cheated me several times with no less a personage than an obscure member of our household, a groom or a lackey or some other person. When I questioned her, she did not deny this accusation. The Seigneur”—Moaris bowed in a throneward direction—“has granted me permission to chastise her here, to provide me with greater satisfaction and you with a moment of amusement.”

  Herndon did not move. He watched as Moaris drew from his sash a glittering little heat gun. Calmly the nobleman adjusted the aperture to minimum. He gestured; a side of the cage slid upward, giving him free target.

  He lifted the heat gun.

  Flick!

  A bright tongue of flame licked out, and the girl in the cage uttered a little moan as a pencil-thin line was seared across her flanks.

  Flick!

  Again the beam played across her body. Flick! Again. Lines of pain were traced across her breasts, her throat, her knees, her back. She revolved helplessly as Moaris amused himself, carving line after line along her body with the heat ray. It was only with an effort that Herndon held still. The members of the court chuckled as the Lady Moaris writhed and danced in an effort to escape the inexorable lash of the beam.

  Moaris was an expert. He sketched patterns on her body, always taking care that the heat never penetrated below the upper surface of the flesh. It was a form of torture that might endure for hours, until the blood bubbled in her veins and she died.

  Herndon realized the Seigneur was peering at him. “Do you find this courtly amusement to your taste, Herndon?” Krellig asked.

  “Not quite, sire.” A hum of surprise rose that such a newcomer to the court should dare to contradict the Seigneur. “I would prefer a quicker death for the lady.”

  “And rob us of our sport?” Krellig asked.

  “I would indeed do that,” said Herndon. Suddenly he thrust open his jeweled cloak; the Seigneur cowered back as if he expected a weapon to come forth, but Herndon merely touched a plate in his chest, activating the device that the Meldian had implanted in his body. The neuronic mesh functioned in reverse; gathering a charge of deadly force, it sent the bolt surging along Herndon’s hand. A bright arc of fire leaped from Herndon’s pointing finger and surrounded the girl in the cage.

  “Barr!” she screamed, breaking her silence at last, and died.

  Again Herndon discharged the neuronic force, and Moaris, his hands singed, dropped his heat gun.

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” Herndon said as Krellig stared white-faced at him and the nobles of the court huddled together in fright. “I am Barr Herndon, son of the First Earl of Zonnigog. Somewhat over a year ago a courtier’s jest roused you to lay waste to your fief of Zonnigog and put my family to the sword. I have not forgotten that day.”

  “Seize him!” Krellig shrieked.

  “Anyone who touches me will be blasted with the fire,” Herndon said. “Any weapon directed at me will recoil upon its owner. Hold your peace and let me finish.

  “I am also Barr Herndon, Second Steward to Lord Moaris, and the lover of the woman who died before you. It must comfort you, Moaris, to know that the man who cuckolded you was no mere groom but a noble of Zonnigog.

  “I am also,” Herndon went on in the dead silence, “Barr Herndon the spacerogue, driven to take up a mercenary’s trade by the destruction of my household. In that capacity I became a smuggler of starstones, and”—he bowed—“through an ironic twist, found myself owing a debt of fealty to none other than you, Seigneur.

  “I hereby revoke that oath of fealty, Krellig—and for the crime of breaking an oath to my monarch, I sentence myself to death. But also, Krellig, I order a sentence of death upon your head for the wanton attack upon my homeland. And you, Moaris—for your cruel and barbaric treatment of this woman whom you never loved, you must die, too.

  “And all of you—you onlookers and sycophants, you courtiers and parasites, you, too, must die. And you, the court clowns, the dancing bears and captive lifeforms of far worlds, I will kill you, too, as once I killed a slave proteus—not out of hatred but simply to spare you from further torment.”

  He paused. The hall was terribly silent; then som
eone to the right of the throne shouted, “He’s crazy! Let’s get out of here!”

  He dashed for the great doors, which had been closed. Herndon let him get within ten feet of safety, then blasted him down with a discharge of life force. The mechanism within his body recharged itself, drawing its power from the hatred within him and discharging through his fingertips.

  Herndon smiled at Lord Moaris, pale now. He said, “I’ll be more generous to you than you to your Lady. A quick death for you.”

  He hurled a bolt of force at the nobleman. Moaris recoiled, but there was no hiding possible; he stood bathed in light for a moment, and then the charred husk dropped to the ground.

  A second bolt raked the crowd of courtiers. A third Herndon aimed at the throne; the costly hangings of the throne area caught first, and Krellig half-rose before the bolt of force caught him and hurled him back dead.

  Herndon stood alone in the middle of the floor. His quest was at its end; he had achieved his vengeance. All but the last: on himself, for having broken the oath he had involuntarily sworn to the Seigneur.

  Life held no further meaning for him. It was odious to consider returning to a spacerogue’s career, and only death offered absolution from his oaths.

  He directed a blazing beam of force at one of the great pillars that supported the throne room’s ceiling. It blackened, then buckled. He blasted apart another of the pillars, and the third.

  The roof groaned; after hundreds of years the tons of masonry were suddenly without support. Herndon waited, then smiled in triumph as the ceiling hurtled down at him.

  A Biography of Robert Silverberg

  Robert Silverberg (b. 1935) is an American author best known for his science fiction titles, including Nightwings (1969), Dying Inside (1972), and Lord Valentine’s Castle (1980). He has won five Nebula Awards and five Hugo Awards. In 2004, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America honored Silverberg with the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.

  Silverberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 15, 1935, the only child of Michael and Helen Silverberg. An avid reader and writer from an early age, Silverberg began his own fanzine, Spaceship, in 1949. In 1953, at age eighteen, he sold his first nonfiction piece to Science Fiction Adventures magazine. His first novel, Revolt on Alpha C, was published shortly after, in 1955. That same year, while living in New York City and studying at Columbia University, Silverberg met his neighbors and fellow writers Randall Garrett and Harlan Ellison, both of whom went on to collaborate with him on numerous projects. Silverberg and Randall published pieces under the name Robert Randall. In 1956, Silverberg graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor of arts degree in comparative literature, married Barbara Brown, and won the Hugo Award for Most Promising New Author.

  Following the whirlwind of his college years, Silverberg continued to write consistently for most of his life. Writing under various pseudonyms, including David Osborne and Calvin M. Knox, Silverberg managed to publish eleven novels and more than two hundred short pieces between 1957 and 1959. Having established himself as a science fiction writer by this time, Silverberg went on to show dexterity in other genres, from historical nonfiction with Treasures Beneath the Sea (1960) to softcore pornography under the pseudonym Don Elliot.

  Silverberg continued to write outside science fiction until Frederik Pohl, the editor of Galaxy Science Fiction, convinced him to rejoin the field. It was in this period, from the late 1960s to early 1970s, that Silverberg’s classics, including Tower of Glass (1970), The World Inside (1971), and The Book of Skulls (1972), came to life. After taking a break from writing, Silverberg returned with Lord Valentine’s Castle in 1980.

  Though they had been separated for nearly a decade, Silverberg and Barbara officially ended their marriage in 1986. A year later, Silverberg married fellow writer Karen Haber. They went on to collaborate on writing The Mutant Season (1990) and editing several anthologies. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, Silverberg published important titles including Star of Gypsies (1986), and continued his established Majipoor series with The Mountains of Majipoor (1995) and Sorcerers of Majipoor (1997). In 1999, Silverberg was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

  With a career that spans half a century, multiple genres, and more than three hundred titles, Silverberg has made major contributions as a writer. He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife.

  Silverberg at six months old with his parents.

  Silverberg at summer camp in August 1952, reading the September issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, which featured a story by Theodore Sturgeon.

  The first page of Silverberg’s manuscript for his first novel, Revolt on Alpha C, published in 1955.

  An early rejection letter dated July 18, 1949.

  Silverberg conversing with a nymph at author Brian Aldiss’s home in Oxford, England, after the 1987 Brighton Worldcon. (Courtesy of Andrew Porter.)

  Silverberg with his wife, Karen, at the 2004 Nebula Awards in Seattle, where he received his Grand Master Award.

  (Unless otherwise noted, all images taken from Other Spaces, Other Times by Robert Silverberg, courtesy of Nonstop Press.)

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  “Slaves of the Star Giants” © 1956, 1984 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “Spawn of the Deadly Sea” © 1957, 1985 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “The Flame and the Hammer” © 1957, 1985 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “Valley Beyond Time” © 1957, 1985 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “Hunt the Space-Witch!” © 1957, 1985 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “The Silent Invaders” © 1958, 1986 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “Spacerogue” © 1958, 1986 by Agberg, Ltd.

  Copyright © 2011 by Agberg, Ltd.

  Cover design by Kat Lee

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-1426-7

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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