The Warlock of Sharrador
By GARDNER F. FOX
For unremembered eons the Thing had slept. For
a million years it had quested through the star
worlds of its dreams, until it lived only as a
faint legend in the race memories of mankind. But
now the time had come for man to recall its name,
and to worship it once again. Noorlythin arose
and went out into the world of men and robots.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The McCanahan came awake in the pearl mists of a Senn dawn, staringupward into the round blue muzzle of a Thorn blaster. The handgunhung in the air without visible support, its trigger moving slowlyback. In an instant, it would lash out at him with a thousand tares ofdestruction.
He whipped the bedclothes into a geyser of silk and moonylon, and dovenaked over the edge of the bed to roll on the floor and turn over andover. He brought up against the chair where his uniform belt hung, andfumbled blindly for his service holster.
The blaster spoke in a soft whooosh of yellow flame, and the bedclothespuffed once, billowing into a thick, reddish smoke. That would havebeen me, instead of the blankets, if the Little People had not come inmy dreams to whisper in my ears of Flaith's loveliness, the McCanahanthought, and tore loose his addy-gun.
His wrist steadied, and he touched the stud. The blaster, hung on atensor beam, went red, then white, and began to melt in droplets allover the thick Morrvan carpet of his officer's quarters. The tensorbeam, held by a minute mechanism inbuilt within the handgun's butt, letloose, and the blistered, melting thing thudded to the floor.
"It was a close thing," Kael McCanahan told himself, sitting therenaked on the floor.
It had been the sfarri who had sent the gun. The sfarri, who hated themen of Terra with a hate like a fierce, blazing flame, who would notscruple at assassination to gain their aims.
They were a cold, efficient breed of men, these sfarri. The farflungGalactic fleet ships of Mother Terra, stretched in a thin line betweenthe stars, had crossed addy beams and searirays with their slim vesselsa thousand times. Almost always, Terra lost her ships. Almost always,those far-ranging sfarran ships smashed the eagle-blazoned Terrancruisers, and fled like laughing ghosts into the black infinity ofspace.
No Terran ship had ever captured a living sfarran. Somehow, with thebarbaric philosophy of hara-kari, they committed suicide. It neverfailed.
And slowly, but remorselessly, the ships of Terra and the Solar Combinewere pushed back and back, away from the Rim planets and the closevastness of the Sack worlds that were so rich in every mineral, jeweland foodstuff known to man, and even in some that Terran man had neverknown.
The Solar Command had ordered Kael's father, Sire Patric McCanahan,Fleet Admiral, with Captain Raoul Edmunds and Commodore Kael McCanahan,to Senorech, there to make at last parlay with the High Mor who ruledthe Senn. They were to offer alliances and trade agreements.
Too many times, at the foot of the great ruboid throne of the Sennruler, had young Kael McCanahan seen the thin, hard lips of the HighMor twist cruelly as he lashed out at the gray-haired Admiral. Too manytimes had the red flush of fury crept up past his tight white uniformcollar with its crimson Commodore braid encrusted thick on its