The Lady had a ready wit, an open purse and a reputation for sorcery which she assured Corson was quite undeserved.While Corson had little liking for magic and still less for magicians, it seemed too good an opportunity to refuse. But when her employer's enemies proved to be as numerous as her coins, Corson decided that any aid was welcome--even the Lady's sorcery.

    The gentle, celibate sorceress Frostflower wants a child, and can bring a baby from conception to birth in an afternoon. Though the pacifistic sorcerers are feared and hated outside their mysterious mountain retreats, Frostflower persuades the suspicious warrior to let her magick the baby to term. But when the sorceress's actions arouse the wrath of the ruling priests, Frostflower and Thorn find themselves outlaws under a death sentence.

    I hop to avoid either and to entertain you while I'm doing it."Here she has succeeded!

    1979 ACE mass market paperback,2nd impression, no ISBN. Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey. A fantasy anthology with a twist. All different stories from different authors, all in the same town.

    He'd been hired to deliver a jug to a wizard on the far side of the forest. Unfortunately the jug contained a sex-starved genie, the wizard was dead by foul means, and Fost was probably next to die.Then the genie was stolen and spirited away to the City in the Sky. It was up to Fost to steal it back from two beautiful sisters. They were fighting to become Queen and, using dark powers, had called forth a demon. Now Fost's foray was suddenly a terrible war.

    In the kingdom of Crotheny, two young girls are playing in the tangled gardens of the sacred city of the dead when they stumble upon the unknown crypt of a legendary ancestral queen.

    The second son of a newly anointed nobleman, he must endure the rigors of military training at the elite King's Cavalla Academy--and survive the hatred, cruelty, and derision of his aristocratic classmates--before joining the King of Gernia's brutal campaign of territorial expansion. The life chosen for him will be fraught with hardship, for he must ultimately face a forest-dwelling folk who will not submit easily to a king's tyranny. And they possess an ancient magic their would-be conquerors have long discounted--a powerful sorcery that threatens to claim Nevare Burvelle's soul and devastate his world once the Dark Evening brings the carnival to Old Thares.

    Now, the darkness from beyond that border has begun to enfold Southmarch - or Shadowmarch - the Qua's ancient home. To stop the darkness falling, the Southmarch royal family must face their human enemies, supposed friends and the family curse. Twins Barrick and Briony shoulder impossible burdens as their father is imprisoned and their brother murdered. Briony flees towards her father and the slave armies of the Autarch, while her brother Barrick crosses the Shadowline gripped by madness ..

    In his hands, it would taste blood and cleave its own path through war, seeking vengeance for mortal--and immortal--treachery.

    'The two thieves had themselves been robbed by two youths, who eyed each other suspiciously over the sprawled, senseless bodies. Fafhrd said: 'Our motives for being here seem identical.' 'Surely, they must be!' the Mouser answered curtly, fiercely eyeing his huge, potential foe.Fafhrd glanced down at the belts and money-pouches of the fallen thieves. Then he looked up at the Mouser with an honest, open, ingenuous smile. 'Sixty-sixty?' he suggested. Thus was born the most improbable relationship in the whole history of swords and sorceries.Contains:7 • Induction • [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] • (1957) • shortstory by Fritz Leiber11 • The Snow Women • [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] • (1970) • novella by Fritz Leiber91 • The Unholy Grail • [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] • (1962) • novelette by Fritz Leiber123 • Ill Met in Lankhmar • [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] • (1970) • novella by Fritz Leiber

    The cold-blooded conspiracies of the Renne and the Wills--each family desirous of the prize of rule--would sunder the one kingdom, and spawn generations of hatred and discord.Now Toren Renne, leader of his great and troubled house, dreams of peace--a valiant desire that has spawned hostility among his kinsmen, and vicious internal plots against his life. In the opposing domain, Elise Wills's desire for freedom is to be crushed, as an unwanted marriage to an ambitious and sinister lord looms large. As always, these machinations of nobles are affecting the everyday lives of the common folk--and feeding a bonfire of animosity that has now trapped an unsuspecting young Valeman Tam and two fortune-hunting friends from the North in its high, killing flames.But the closer Toren comes to achieving his great goal of uniting two enemy houses, the more treachery flowers. Nobles and mystics alike conspire to keep the realm divided, knowing that only in times of strife can their power grow.And perhaps the source of an unending misery lies before an old king's passing, beyond the scope of history, somewhere lost in a fog of myth and magic roiling about an ancient enchanter named Wyrr--who bequeathed to his children terrible gifts that would poison their lives...and their deaths. It is a cursed past and malevolent sorcery that truly hold the land, its people, and its would-be rulers bound. And before the already savaged kingdom can become one again, all Ayr will drown in a sea of blood.

    Howard.She lived in a savage world in an uncivilized age-a world ruled by men and governed by the sword. They called her Red Sonja-for her flame-red hair, for the smouldering fire of her pride which gave her sword-arm strength that few men could match and none had ever defeated.

    She haunts the back taverns of the realm, careful to appear neither rich nor poor, neither tall nor short . . . neither man nor woman. Obscurity is her protection, thievery her livelihood, and gambling her weakness.Alas, some bets are hard to resist. Particularly when they offer a chance to board a ship for Hadrumal, the fabled city of the Archmage. So Livak follows a minor wizard, Shiv, in an attempt to turn a rune or two, never dreaming that the stolen tankard she wants to sell contains the secrets of an ancient magic far more powerful, and infinitely darker, than any mortal mage's spells.

    The king had been slain by traitors, and the sword of power had been lost beyond the Circle of Mist. Armies of Saxons, Angles, Jutes, and Brigantes cut a gory swath across the land, led by puppets of the ruthless Witch Queen--whose minions included dark, bloodthirsty creatures and a savage, undead warrior.All hope lay with young Thuro--in whose veins flowed the blood of kings. He would have to defeat the Witch Queen's monsters and travel to the land of the Mist, there to seek a ghostly army. And the only one who could prepare Thuro to achieve his birthright was the mountain warrior Culain, the one man who knew the queen's deadly secret . . .The legend of the mystic Stones of Power begins with a tale of blood and glory, of love and betrayal, as a boy must come of age amidst the seemingly impossible quest to become the High King.

    Most of the planet's wild terrain was unexplored...and many of its peoples seclusive and secretive.But for Andrew Carr there was an attraction he could not evade. Darkover drew him, Darkover haunted him--and when his mapping plane crashed in unknown heights, Darkover prepared to destroy him.Until the planet's magic asserted itself--and his destiny began to unfold along lines predicted only by phantoms and wonder workers of the kind Terran science could never acknowledge.THE SPELL SWORD is a Darkover novel to stand with the great ones of the series.