This collection of stories, including two never-before-published tales, travels through the history of Darkover, the planet of the Bloody Sun, from the Founding to the time of Recontact. Original.

This omnibus features two classic, long-unavailable Darkover novels-Darkover Landfall and Two to Conquer-in one volume for the first time.

Darkover, a planet of wonder, world of mystery, has been a favourite of science fiction readers for many years. For it is a truly alien sphere - a world of strange intelligences of brooding skies beneath a ruddy sun, and of powers unknown to Earth. In this new novel, Mario Zimmer Bradley tells of the original coming of the Earthmen, of the days when Darkover knew not humanity. This is the full bodied novel of what happened when a colonial starship crashlanded on that uncharted planet to encounter for the first time in human existence the impact of the Ghost Wind, of the psychic currents that were native only to that world, and of the price that every Earthling must pay before Darkover can claim for itself.

Leonie Hastur has a high degree of laran, the telepathic power of the Comyn caste, and wants to be Keeper of Arilinn Tower, which will give her as much power as her twin brother Lorill, Heir to Hastur. But she has a premonition that something strange and disturbing will come from the sky and change their world forever. She is correct. Ysaye Barnett loves life on shipboard and would happily stay right there, with her beloved computers, forever. Her best friend Elizabeth Mackintosh, a musician and anthropologist, and her fiance, linguist David Lorne, want to marry and have children, which means they need a planet they can settle on and make their lives' work. They are very excited about the new planet, especially when they realize that it's a lost Terran colony. As five young lives and their very different cultures meet, all of them will be changed by the encounter.

Fantasy.

The most dangerous magical implement on all of Darkover was the infamous, legendary Sharra Matrix. The Sharra Matrix had been exiled offworld in the protective custody of Comyn Lord Lew Alton. But when Lew was called back to Darkover to contest his rights, he had no choice but to bring this dangerous matrix back with him.

She had rejected her noble birthright and embraced the freedom only a man could claim. She was Romilly who lived among the beasts of hill and forest and communicated with them, who tried humanity and turned it down for its evils and jealousies. She had the MacAran Gift, the rare laran that conferred mastery over hawk and horse. There was war in the lands of Darkover for this was the age of chaos when usurpers took the throne and the true king wandered in disguise with a price on his head. Romilly wanted none of all this, but there were those who shared her talents - the men and women of the Towers. And for them, Romilly was the key. Whether male-garbed or beast-minded, she was also human. And duty to her own true kind pointed her to the ultimate decision.

After spending her youth in the Terran Empire, Margaret Alton returns to Darkover, the planet of her birth. There she discovers she has the Alton Gift - forced rapport and compulsion - one of the strongest and most dangerous of the inherited "Laran" gifts of the telepathic Comyn - the ruling families of Darkover. And even as she struggles to control her newfound powers, Margaret finds herself falling in love with the Regent to the royal Elhalyn Domain, a man she has been forbidden to marry, for their alliance would irrevocably alter the power balance of their planet!

Set in the era of The Hundred Kingdoms, this is the tale of the twin sons of the Duke of Hammerfell, separated as children after the destruction of their home and the killing of their father by Ardrin, Lord of Storn, as a result of an ancient blood feud. Alastair, the elder, is raised by his mother, the leronis Erminie in Thendara, the lowland capital of the Hasturs, while Conn, the younger and gifted with telepathy, is saved by an old retainer and grows up with the mountain people of the Hellers. When the two are reunited as adults, Alastair, contemptuous of his brother as a country bumpkin, sets out to reclaim his heritage, while Conn, viewing his twin as a fop and a weakling, stays behind to protect his mother. Here he falls in love with Alastair's promised wife, Floria, a monitor trained to work in the Towers...

The great epic of Darkover did not begin with the Terrans' arrival. For in those years, the power of the matrix was first learned - and misused in a power struggle that could have made Darkover a duplicate of Terra.