Lost Lands of Witch World

L
ost
L
ands
of
W
itch
W
orld

 

T
OR
B
OOKS BY
A
NDRE
N
ORTON

The Crystal Gryphon

Dare to Go A-Hunting

Flight in Yiktor

Forerunner

Forerunner: The Second Venture

Here Abide Monsters

Moon Called

Moon Mirror

The Prince Commands

Ralestone Luck

Stand and Deliver

Wheel of Stars

Wizards' Worlds

Wraiths of Time

Grandmasters' Choice (Editor)

The Jekyll Legacy (with Robert Bloch)

Gryphon's Eyrie (with A. C. Crispin)

Songsmith (with A. C. Crispin)

Caroline (with Enid Cushing)

Firehand (with P. M. Griffin)

Redline the Stars (with P. M. Griffin)

Sneeze on Sunday (with Grace Allen Hogarth)

House of Shadows (with Phyllis Miller)

Empire of the Eagle (with Susan Shwartz)

Imperial Lady (with Susan Shwartz)

C
AROLUS
R
EX
(with Rosemary Edghill)

The Shadow of Albion

Leopard in Exile

B
EAST
M
ASTER
(with Lyn McConchie)

Beast Master's Ark

Beast Master's Circus

T
HE
G
ATES TO
W
ITCH
W
ORLD
(omnibus)

Including:

Witch World

Web of the Witch World

Year of the Unicorn

L
OST
L
ANDS OF
W
ITCH
W
ORLD
(omnibus)

Including:

Three Against the Witch World

Warlock of the Witch World

Sorceress of the Witch World

T
HE
W
ITCH
W
ORLD
(Editor)

Four from the Witch World

Tales from the Witch World 1

Tales from the Witch World 2

Tales from the Witch World 3

W
ITCH
W
ORLD
: T
HE
T
URNING

I Storms of Victory (with P. M. Griffin)

II Flight of Vengeance (with P. M. Griffin & Mary Schaub)

III On Wings of Magic (with Patricia Mathews & Sasha
Miller)

M
AGIC IN
I
THKAR
(Editor, with Robert Adams)

Magic in Ithkar 1

Magic in Ithkar 2

Magic in Ithkar 3

Magic in Ithkar 4

T
HE
S
OLAR
Q
UEEN
(with Sherwood Smith)

Derelict for Trade

A Mind for Trade

T
HE
T
IME
T
RADERS
(with Sherwood Smith)

Echoes in Time

Atlantis Endgame

T
HE
O
AK
, Y
EW
, A
SH, AND
R
OWAN
C
YCLE
(with Sasha Miller)

To the King a Daughter

Knight or Knave

A Crown Disowned

T
HE
H
ALFBLOOD
C
HRONICLES
(with Mercedes Lackey)

The Elvenbane

Elvenblood

Elvenborn

Comprising
Three Against the Witch World,
Warlock of the Witch World,
and Sorceress of the Witch World

A
NDRE
N
ORTON

With an Introduction by Mercedes Lackey

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

LOST LANDS OF WITCH WORLD

Omnibus copyright © 2004 by Andre Norton

Introduction copyright © 2004 by Mercedes Lackey

Three Against the Witch World
, copyright © 1965 by Andre Norton
Warlock of the Witch World
, copyright © 1967 by Andre Norton
Sorceress of the Witch World
, copyright © 1968 by Andre Norton

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Edited by James Frenkel

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor
^®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Norton, Andre.

Lost lands of Witch World / Andre Norton.—1st ed.

     p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

Contents: Three against the Witch World—Warlock of the Witch World—Sorceress of the Witch World.

ISBN 0-765-30052-4 (acid-free paper)

EAN 978-0765-30052-2

1. Witch World (Imaginary place)—Fiction. 2. Fantasy fiction, American. I. Title.

PS3527.O625A6 2004
813'.52—dc22

2003071153

First Edition: June 2004

Printed in the United States of America

0   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

Introduction by Mercedes Lackey

Three Against the Witch World

Warlock of the Witch World

Sorceress of the Witch World

O
nce upon a time, in the 1950s and early 1960s, the only category in the “imaginative fiction” genre was science fiction. Never mind that there was a rich heritage of fantasy fiction ranging from the Middle Ages onward; in the bookstores (and for book buyers) it was all lumped under the heading of Science Fiction. And, to tell the truth, the pickings available to those who appreciated fantasy were pretty slender. There were Robert E Howard's Conan stories and the many imitators of those stories, of course, if you wanted Iron-Thewed Manly Fiction. There were reprints of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his ilk from the days of the pulps. But for those whose tastes ran to something more concerned with magic and wonder, well, there wasn't a lot in the paperback section. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy had just become available, both in the pirated Ace edition (heavily edited) and the Ballantine version (which had Tolkien's blessing). There was T. H. White's
The Once and Future King
, which had finally gone into paperback because of Lerner and Lowe's musical,
Camelot
, which was based upon it. But there was precious little else for someone stuck in small-town America or the endless tract houses of suburbia, as I was.

For readers in the big cities, things were not nearly so bleak. If you had access to a really good big-city or university library, you might be able to find C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia in the children's section, as well as the works of George MacDonald, or at least
The Princess and the Goblin
. You might even be able to find the great Edwardian and Victorian fantasists, such as Lord Dunsany. If you were a science fiction cognoscente, you might have in your magazine collection C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry stories, and in fact the magazines
Amazing, Astounding
, and
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
occasionally printed a fantasy tale.

But for the most part, for those of us whose reading consisted of what we could find at the corner drugstore, with rare forays into a “real” bookstore, anything that might be described as fantasy was generally science fiction in a different costume. Magic was almost always psychic powers with other names. Occasionally you could find a gothic romance with magical trappings—in fact, the late Fritz Leiber's
Conjure Wife
was marketed that way. Such a rare find was treasured indeed and required a lot of digging.

Then came the year 1963, and a slim little book from Ace called
Witch World
by Andre Norton, and everything changed. Perhaps not so strangely, the fact that a change was in the air was hardly obvious, not even to those who saw the book. It's difficult to see change when you are on top of it—often it is only apparent in retrospect.

Science fiction fans had known all about Andre Norton for some time; her novels
Daybreak 2250
A.D
., The Last Planet
, and especially
Beast Master
were staples in any collection. She had been writing and publishing books since 1935, although she didn't start to become a big name in science fiction until the early 1950s; she had a solid reputation for producing consistently great stories and a long, long list of books in her backlist (some forty-five books in all by 1963).

In fact, C. J. Cherryh later said of her, “I've seen a complete collection of Andre Norton's books and it haunts me to this day, sort of like the sight of an unscalable Everest.”

Miss Norton was prolific, and she was
good
—and by 1963 most people knew, thanks to a little Author's Note in the front of the books, that the masculine “Andre” was the
nom de plume
of the very feminine lady born Alice Mary Norton (who is, by the way, no relation to the lady of the same name who published the Borrowers books for children). When Andre first presented her books to publishers, she was advised that “science fiction is a boy's genre” and that “boys won't read books written by women,” hence the name change, which she made legal in 1934. Well, boys
did
read her books, and girls, and people who were decidedly older than “boys” and “girls.” She wrote in several genres—western, juvenile historical, and even gothics—but the genres that she loved most, and did the majority of her work in, were science fiction and fantasy.