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THE PRINCE: Spoiled, reckless, heedless of any wants or needs but his own, sentenced to a terrible fate for his sins against man, woman, and God.

THE STALLION: Equally spoiled, equally reckless, bound until death to a bitter servitude.

THE TURK'S HEIR: Fiercest of rivals, most devoted of enemies, whose armor hides a secret. Come into the world of the Arabian Nights, where magic and mystery meet; where justice lays a sinner low, and the magic of the heart turns hate to love.

Gerbert was a farmer's son in an obscure town in France, but his gifts of mind and intellect were so remarkable that even in the feudal world of the tenth century, he could rise far above his station. Princes and prelates courted him; emperors called him friend and teacher. He brought the lost art of mathematics back into Europe; he was an astronomer, a musician, a builder of strange and wonderful devices. In the end he reached the pinnacle of the world, a seat so lofty and an authority so great that he answered only to God Himself.

But Gerbert was more than a simple professor of the mathematical arts, or even a prince of the Church. As a young student in Spain, guided by his priestly patron, he entered into the study of another art altogether, a hidden art, mastering mighty powers of mystery and magic.

Magic, as every student of the art knows, has a price--and the greater the magic, the higher the price. The magic that came to Gerbert was very great indeed.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology After the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien (1992), edited by Martin H. Greenberg. It can also be found in the anthology Modern Classics of Fantasy (1997).

I am no one. I pass from dark into dark. I hunt a track gone cold as stone.

For five thousand Earthyears, the planet called Nevermore has been empty. Its cities are deserted, with every trace of their inhabitants erased. Only a handful of nomadic tribes remain, none of whom remember the ones who went before.

An expedition from Earth has been excavating one of the planet's many ruins, and attempting without success to find the cause of its people's disappearance. Now the expedition is in trouble, its funding cut; unless it makes a major discovery, and soon, it will be shut down. Then the United Planets will invade Nevermore and strip it of its resources, and destroy its ancient and enigmatic treasures.

Aisha, the daughter of the chief archaeologists, tries to save the expedition by opening a sealed tomb or treasury -- and manages instead to destroy it. But one treasure survives, which may be the key to the planet's mystery. That treasure is alive, and deeply dangerous: a long-forgotten king and conqueror, sentenced to be preserved in stasis centuries before his world was abandoned.

Khalida is a Military Intelligence officer with a quarter-million deaths on her conscience. She has retreated to the near-solitude of Nevermore to try to come to terms with what she has done, but her past will not let her go. The war she thought she had ended still rages, and is about to destroy one planet and spread chaos through a hundred more. Her superiors force her back into service, and dispatch her to a world that may also offer a clue to the mystery of Nevermore.

With the alien king, the sentient starship he liberates from an unholy alliance of Military Intelligence and the Interstellar Institute for Psychic Research, and a crew of scientists, explorers, and renegades, Aisha and Khalida set off on a journey to the end of the universe and beyond. What they find will change not only the future of Nevermore, but that of all the United Planets.

Nicole Gunther-Perrin is a modern young professional, proud of her legal skills but weary of childcare, of senior law partners who put the moves on her, and of her deadbeat ex-husband. Following a ghastly day of dealing with all three, she falls into bed asleep - and awakens the next morning to find herself in a different life, that of a widowed tavernkeeper in the Roman frontier town of Carnuntum around 170 A.D.

Delighted at first to be away from corrupt, sexist modern America, she quickly begins to realise that her new world is as complicated as her old one. Violence, dirt, and pain are everywhere - and yet many of the people she comes to know are as happy as those she knew in twentieth-century Los Angeles. Slavery is a commonplace, gladiators kill for sport, and drunkenness is taken for granted - but everyday people somehow manage to face life with humour and good will.

No quitter, Nicole manages to adapt to her new life despite endless worry about the fate of her children "back" in the twentieth century. Then plague sweeps through Carnuntum, followed by brutal war. Amid pain and loss on a level she had never imagined, Nicole finds reserves of strength she had never known.

World Fantasy Award nominee and critically claimed author Judith Tarr has created a fantastic legend inspired by the epic poem The Song of Roland and the mythical history of Merlin.

Centuries after the fall of Camelot and the disappearance of King Arthur, the wizard Merlin remained a prisoner in an enchanted forest. Then an ardent youth named Roland came and vowed to free him, unaware of the consequences such an oath carried.

Roland has since become a knight and a mighty warrior. But his mystical powers are untested and his mentor remains imprisoned. Then an old enemy of Merlin's returns, seeking the very object that tore apart the Knights of the Round Table -- the Holy Grail. Now, with the help of a beautiful Saracen healer and a magical sword, Roland must face his test, fulfill his oath -- and find his destiny.

Nine stories of horses and their people. Nine tales of magic and enchantment.

Horses of the ancient world, horses of the Middle Ages and the Arabian Nights, horses of the present and the future, even horses (and not quite horses) of a world that never was.

When a mysterious stranger steals the Emperor Charlemagne's favorite horse, the Emperor's page goes hunting for the thief and the horse--and uncovers a secret older than gods.

Drawn to a stableyard full of legendary white horses, a passerby finds a greater legend still, and an ancient treasure.

In a far future world, horses are no longer precisely horses--except for one precious herd, which alone preserves the ancient bloodlines. When that herd is ordered to conform to modern laws of genetics, the results are not at all what the laws' makers expect.

In these and other stories, horsewoman and author and historian Judith Tarr celebrates the lore and legend of the horse, and the age-old bond between horse and human.

Return to a time when magic ruled the world, when people lived and died in the name of honor and risked all in the honor of love. Alamut is the tale of two great and timeless beings: Prince Aidan, born of a royal human father and an immortal sorceress...and the Lady Morgiana, Aidan's enemy and perhaps the only woman he can truly love.

In the years between the Second and Third Crusades, Prince Aidan travels to the Kingdom of Jerusalem to visit his mortal nephew, only to discover him slain at the command of the powerful Sinan.

Aidan swears to avenge the murder--but he has not foreseen Morgiana, an immortal slave-assassin whose powers are greater eve than his own. Nor could he have known that she alone would speak to those sacred places of his heart....

Prepare to embark on the adventure of a lifetime, in a tale of treachery and magic, a saga woven within the tapestry of the Middle Ages and told as only Judith Tarr can.

In the time of the Crusades, in a world at war, a prince of immortal lineage and a spirit of fire who was once an Assassin prepare to celebrate a royal wedding. But he is Christian and she is Muslim, and there are those who hate them not only for their disparate faiths but for their power and magic.

From the holy city of Jerusalem to the bitter battlefield of Hattin, from Saladin's Damascus to the Crusaders' fortress of Acre, the tides of war sweep the lovers apart. Even magic might not be enough to save them, or the kingdom to which they have both pledged fealty.

When word of the Macedonian king, Alexander, reaches Egypt, the priests of Amon send Meriamon, daughter of Pharaoh, to find Alexander and persuade him to become king of their land.

Judith Tarr returns to the always fascinating character of Alexander the Great in this fantasy novel that springs from the legend that the Queen of the Amazons came to meet him in Persia, and became his friend.

Hippolyta was Penthesilea, or Queen of the Amazons. She ruled as war leader and high priestess of a scattered tribe of women warriors who had dwelt on the high plains to the north and east of Persia for time out of mind. They were not isolated---travelers came and went through their territory, bringing news from the west, and carrying tales of the warrior women back home with them.

But the Queen had a great grief in her life: her daughter and heir was a strange child. The girl had been born, so the Priestesses said, without a soul. And it was true that she was like no other child alive. She did not speak, and often seemed not to even see the people around her. She could not dress or feed herself, but she could ride and hunt like no other woman of the tribe. Many of the Amazons believed that the child must never be Queen, but that was a problem for a later time--Hippolyta was young and strong.

Selene, the niece of the tribe's Seer, was put in charge of the child, to be her nursemaid and guardian. And it was a good, though sometimes difficult, life for many turns of the years. But then one day news came from the West of a new Conqueror, a young man who came out of Macedon with a spirit like flame, intending to rule the whole world. The Queen's daughter responded to the tale as a woman in the desert would to the sound of falling water. That very night she stole out of the camp and rode west. Selene could not stop her, and so she must follow, praying that the Queen would understand. Hippolyta herself followed the next day, and so they rode together, controlled by the child's compulsion, until they had crossed the mountains and entered into Alexander's Empire, and under the sway of Alexander's powerful personality.

Alexander the Great ruled the greatest Empire of the ancient world, but he was ruled by his mother, called Olympias. There are as many legends about this powerful Queen as there are of her famous son, and the stories began long before she even met Philip of Macedon. Priestess of the Great Goddess, daughter of ruling house of Epiros, witch, and familiar of Serpents...she was a figure of mystery, fascination, and fear even during her own lifetime. Author Judith Tarr weaves the legends into an intensely romantic fantasy novel set in ancient Greece and Macedon.

The king's heir of Ianon is long lost, vanished into the south. Her father refuses to name his son heir in her place, though that son is a mighty warrior. Then one day a young wanderer arrives with news that both breaks and heals the king's heart: his heir is dead, but before she died, she gave birth to a son. That child, now grown, has come to take her place. But the king's son will not surrender his hope of kingship to a boy without a father, though he claims to be the son of a god.

Elian of Han-Gilen is the pride and scandal of her father's princedom. She has out-ridden, out-hunted, and out-shot every suitor. Now comes one whom she could bring herself to love: No lesser man than the throne prince of the Golden Empire. But Elian swore an oath as a child to a foster brother who is now a warrior king. Consort to an imperial heir or squire at arms to a conqueror: Elian must choose, and in choosing, decide the fate of two empires.

Kidnapped, tortured, betrayed by his brothers whom he loved, the heir of the Golden Empire has lost everything but his life. His only hope is a chance encounter, a wandering priest from the Empire of the Sun. But the priest is more than he seems, and the prince is stronger than he knew; and war is coming. Two empires hang in the balance. Two emperors will fall, unless the prince and his unwelcome ally find a way to make peace. But peace comes at a price; and that price may be too high for either to pay.

The war between the Golden Empire and the Empire of the Sun is over, the empires merged into one, and one emperor over them all: Estarion, heir to both royal houses. But Estarion will not accept half of his heritage, nor will the Golden Empire willingly accept him. The same forces that assassinated his father are arrayed against him, led by the last scion of an ancient imperial line--and he must stand against them and truly unite the empires, or see all the great work of his ancestors reduced to rubble.

Worldgates are a great magic and a great convenience: opening the way from one world to the next, and from one side of a world to the other. Now the mages of the Gates are exploring a new continent and forging new alliances, led by the Master of the Mageguild and the heir to the throne of Sun and Lion. Suddenly, the Gates begin to fall--and the Master and the royal heir are trapped in a hidden kingdom on the far side of the world, with no way out but through the broken Gates.

Prince Daros of Han-Gilen is an infamous rake and wastrel-and a hidden and completely untrained mage of enormous power. Caught breaking the strictest laws of the Mageguild and their magical Worldgates, he is sentenced to serve an aged emperor far away from either taverns or temptations.

But a tide of darkness is rising to swallow the worlds of the Gates. Mages are dying and worse; but Daros's very lack of training shows him the way to stand against the tide: to enter the darkness, and pay its price, and engage it on its own ground.

The classic series now in one volume for the first time!

He appeared out of the northern mountain fastness, wielding powerful magics and claiming to be the Sun God's own child. His burning desire was to rule the entire world, and he inspired the loyalty of men who would fight for it with him. But conquering an empire, and ruling it, are two very different things. Even for the children of a demi-God.

Contains:

• The Hall of the Mountain King
• The Lady of Han-Gilen
• A Fall of Princes

Here in a single volume is the second trilogy of Judith Tarr's novels about the world of Avaryan, and the Sun God's children who rule it.

The Sunborn's heirs have ruled the two empires for four generations, but the newest Emperor of Endros and Asanion does not sit easily. The Golden Palace is full of plot and intrigue, and conspirators who plan to kill Estarion, as they killed his father, and take the throne for their own.

The Emperor Estarion's willful granddaughter, and heir to the throne, has wheedled permission to travel with the Master of the Mage Guild to a high mountain kingdom at the end of the chain of World Gates. But once inside the Kingdom of Heaven, mere magery will meet its match. The power of the Sun Lords will be needed counter the Breaker of Gates.

A chill wave of dark sorcery sweeps across a thousand worlds, turning souls without number into mute, blind slaves. In a desperate attempt to halt the shadow's relentless spread, the Sunborn's heir must join her formidable powers with those of a wild and untrained young mage who has stolen her heart.

Contains:

• Arrows of the Sun
• Spear of Heaven
• Tides of Darkness

National bestselling author of Pride of Kings and World Fantasy Award nominee conjures a fascinating world of sorcerers and warriors in this dramatically powerful tale.

Led by Richard the Lionheart, king of the English and count of Anjou, the armies of the West are conducting a crusade against the sultan Saladin. In Cyprus, the king's mother, Eleanor, has struck a devil's bargain with the sorcerer Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, to grant Richard victory at any cost. Only Sinan knows that victory will cost the king his immortal soul.

Sioned, an illegitimate child of a princess of the Celts and the late king of England, is heir to twofold magic: the faery Sight of ancient Wales and the demonic powers of the Devil's brood of Anjou. Summoned by her brother Richard to save both the Crusade and his soul, Sioned receives help from two unlikely allies--a prince of the infidels and an army of the jinn--as she races against time and the powers of the darkness. But with the extent of her abilities still untested and only her instincts to guide her, will she be able to swing the sorcerous struggle back toward the powers of the light?

National bestselling author Judith Tarr returns to the world of her critically-acclaimed Devil's Bargain as the sorceress Sioned and her half-brother King Richard once again face the Old Man of the Mountain, an evil sorcerer determined to destroy them...

In the dawn of time, women ruled, and the people had no word for war. Then the horsemen came.

Sarama is the last of the White Mare's servants, descended from an ancient line conquered long ago by warrior tribes. Her father is the king of one such tribe. Her twin brother Agni is the king's heir. But she is heir to an older world, and a different way.

A sacred vision calls the White Mare westward, and Sarama follows. There, she finds a land where women rule, and men serve, and their language has no word for war. But the horsemen are coming. Sarama must choose between her own people and the people whom she has come to love, and find a way to save them both.

For a long, brutal century, the Kingdom of Lower Egypt has been occupied by the "Vile Asiatics," the conquerors called the Shepherd Kings. With their horses and chariots they overwhelmed the armies of Egypt and swept over the Delta and the sacred cities.

Iry, daughter of an old noble house, the Sun Ascendant, has been enslaved by the bearded conquerors. But her new master is born of a different blood, son of the priestess of an ancient rite, the cult of the Horse Goddess and her avatar, the White Mare. The Mare's priestess-servant is dead--and the Mare chooses Iry, the child of a land without horses, to be her successor.

Meanwhile, in the wider world, the Pharaoh of Upper Egypt is arming to take back the lost kingdom. He forms such an alliance as his ancient land has never seen before, with the seafarers of Crete and the White Mare's servant, and rides to war against the Shepherd Kings.

A young girl-child first dared to mount on the back of a mare, but the priests declared that this must be a mans privilege only. They stole her achievement and made a new legend giving that achievement to her brother. But the spirit of the horse is a Goddess, and Horse Goddess would not be deprived of her servants.

Long years after the White Mare came to the people of the Mothers, bringing the wild horsemen from the sea of grass and changing the world forever, the world is changing again. The Mother of Lir is dead, her heir cast out amid dire omens. War is coming--such a war as the people have never seen, fought with a new and terrible weapon: the chariot.

Rhian, potter's child and White Mare's chosen, ventures with Emry the prince of Lir into the sea of grass and undertakes to steal the enemy's weapon. But that enemy is not at all what they expected. In Minas, prince and maker of chariots, and his mother Aera, they find a remarkable and deadly kinship--and forge an alliance that will be both the destruction and the salvation of Lir.

Claire is barely scraping a living on her friend's ranch near Tucson, Arizona. She looks after the long-abandoned horse facility, makes occasional attempts to resuscitate her academic career, and pays the bills, more or less, with her skills as an animal communicator. Those skills don't always let her say the tactful thing to the human with the checkbook. Sometimes she has to tell the truth.

After a particularly unfortunate session, Claire gets one last chance to keep her home and her livelihood. A small herd of horses needs a place to live and a person to care for them.

But these are no ordinary horses. They represent an old, old breed, the rarest in the world, and they protect an ancient and terrible secret. And something is hunting them.

The ranch is a perfect sanctuary. The powers that live on and under and above it can protect the horses--if Claire can control them. But first she has to control her own abilities, and learn to believe in herself.

Alfred of St. Ruan's Abbey is a monk and a scholar, a religious man whose vocation is beyond question. But Alfred is also, without a doubt, one of the fair folk, for though he is more than seventy years old by the Abbey's records, he seems to be only a youth.

But Alfred is drawn from the haven of his monastery into his dangerous currents of politics when an ambassador from the kingdom of Rhiyana to Richard Coeur de Leon is wounded and Alfred himself is sent to complete the mission. There he encounters the Hounds of God, who believe that the fair folk have no souls, and must be purged from the Church and from the world.

Contents:

• 3 - The Isle of Glass - (1985)
• 235 - The Golden Horn - (1985)
• 452 - Author's Note (The Golden Horn) - essay
• 457 - The Hounds of God - (1986)

Alfred of St. Ruan's has lived his life in the seclusion of the monastery. But a badly wounded knight on a mission from the Elvenking, a beautiful and mysterious stranger who walks as both woman and beast, and a warrior king call him out of the cloister's walls into the wars and storms of the world. For he is neither mortal nor human, though he has long tried to live as both; and he can deny neither his nature nor his powerful magic.

The saga of Alfred of St. Ruan's comes to a tumultuous climax during the fall of the City of Cities, the Golden Horn: Constantinople. War is advancing through the Byzantine Empire. Its capital, Constantinople, is the richest city in the thirteenth century world. The crusaders from the West have turned aside from Jerusalem in order to plunder and conquer their fellow Christians instead. Alfred, pilgrim and healer, and Thea, friend an shapechanger, seek out Thea's family in that city, but they find her home empty and forgotten. In despair, Thea abandons Alfred, and he, in his despair, walks aimlessly until overcome by sunstroke. A Greek woman, Sophia, rescues him and brings him to her home in Constantinople. He remains there as a tutor to her Children and a friend to her and her husband. When well again, Alfred takes work in a house of healing, and though a man of the same race as the Crusaders, is accepted and valued by his Greek hosts.

In the magical kingdom of Rhiyana, peace reigns under the Elvenking. But terrible forces are stirring in the world beyond. The Hounds of God, the heretic-hunters and inquisitors of the Church of Rome, have come hunting. Their prey: the king and his immortal people. And their greatest weapon may be one of the king's own kin.

Valeria relishes the tales of the mysterious, powerful Mountain where the gods -- powerful beings in the form of white horses -- live. And she loves hearing stories of the elite Riders who ride the stallions in the Dance -- a pattern that reflects, influences and sometimes creates the past, present or future. Though Valeria has a horse sense thought magical, she knows no woman has ever been called to the Mountain. Until she feels a strange pull and makes the decision to answer the call -- as a boy..

Only Kerrec, a senior Rider, and Euan, a barbarian prince, realize the truth as Valeria survives until the final test -- and passes with acclaim. But in her moment of triumph her secret is discovered and Valeria loses all that she's won.

Meanwhile, the barbarians plot to overthrow the Aurelian Empire. And Valeria's anger and frustration might be enough to give them a way in. Now the Empire depends on the will, the strength and the loyalty of one Rider. A Rider who has been rejected by all but the gods.

Striving to save the Aurelian Empire, Valeria reached for too much power too quickly and a darkness has rooted inside her. Unable to confess the truth, Valeria turns to Kerrec, her former mentor, one of the elite Riders from the Mountain, home of the gods. But Kerrec, too, is deeply wounded and his darkness may be even deeper than hers -- and he is refusing to face it. Until his weakness nearly destroys the Riders and their immortal white stallions...

As Kerrec is sent from the Mountain on a desperate quest for healing, Valeria is forbidden to follow. But compelled by a power she cannot understand and encouraged by her own stallion, she shadows Kerrec on a perilous mission.

The patterns of deception and secrets have been woven, the threats of war and unrest spread throughout the land, the barbarian hordes return and once more it is Valeria -- and Kerrec -- who must gather their strength and their wounded magic to protect all that they believe in....

But who will believe in them?

Once again the Aurelian Empire is in danger, and once again Valeria must risk more than her life to save it. With threats from without, including sorcerous attacks against the soon-to-be empress, and pressures from within--the need to continue the dynasty and Kerrec, the father of Valeria's child, the first choice to do so--Valeria must overcome plots and perils as she struggles to find a place in this world she's helped to heal.

But her greatest foes have not been vanquished.

And they won't be forgotten or ignored. Nor will the restless roil of magic within Valeria herself. Soon the threat of Unmaking, a danger to all the empire, begins to arise in Valeria's soul once more. It is subtle, it is powerful, and this time it might win out.

For 500 years the Saxons ruled England, crushing the ancient powers. But a wave of change approaches. Across the Channel in Normandy, William is born-the bastard son of a duke and a magical woman of Druid descent. As he grows to manhood, William's battle skills earn him respect, but his temper and disregard for his innate magical abilities hold him back. He needs a teacher, whether he wants one or not, and finds one in the beautiful French noblewoman Mathilda.

But William is resistant to the very idea of magic, and unless he can accept Mathilda's help-and her love-his imperfectly controlled abilities may destroy him. In an epic battle that spans worlds and ages, magical forces and earthbound armies will be drawn together by William as he fights to achieve his destiny-and reign as King of England.

The national bestselling author of Rite of Conquest continues the saga of a Britain torn between ancient magic and religious doctrine--and the turbulent lives of the two sons of William the Conqueror.

William the Conqueror is dead. The Norman king freed England from the stranglehold of Saxon Christianity, but in the years following his beloved queen's death, he turned his back on the magic that sustains the land. Inheriting the throne is the Conqueror's eldest son, Red William, who is determined to leave magic out of his rule entirely. And without a true king, the land weakens, suffers, and begins to die.

The fate of Britain lies with two people gifted in magic: Edith, princess of Scotland, and Henry, youngest son of the Conqueror. But Edith is imprisoned in a convent, forced to suppress her abilities and embrace Saxon ideology, while Henry has no lands or authority of his own. And only a great sacrifice--the blood of a king--will cleanse Britain from the evil and pestilence that infects it.