HIGH ADVENTURE ON A WORLD OF MARVELS

Ex-colonel Simon Tregarth was a hunted man—and the hunt was beginning to come to a deadly end. He knew that a desperate situation required a desperate solution, but the one being suggested by Jorge Petronius was wild beyond the imagination.

To give himself up to the mysterious Siege Perilous, the stone of Power, that judged a man, determined his worth, and then delivered him into a world in which his mind and his spirit would be at home.

The choice was irrevocable; there was no return and once there, no escape from WITCH WORLD.

ANDRE NORTON, born Alice Mary Norton, has risen in recent years to the most favored status among readers of science-fiction. It seems to be characteristic of the few women who write in this field that as a rule they are very good at it. And Andre Norton is certainly one of the very best. She is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, and herself an ardent s-f fan and collector.

Ace Books have had the pleasure of publishing her novels in paperbacks and they have always been rated among our fastest selling science-fiction titles. A list of the Norton books currently available in Ace editions will be found in the back of this book.

WITCH WORLD

Copyright ©, 1963, by Ace Books, Inc.

Cover art and title-page illustration by Jack Gaughan

Printed in U.S.A.

PART I: VENTURE OF SULCARKEEP

I

SIEGE PERILOUS

The rain was a slantwise curtain across the dingy street, washing soot from city walls, the taste of it metallic on the lips of the tall, thin man who walked with a loping stride close to the buildings, watching the mouths of doorways, the gaps of alleys with a narrow-eyed intentness.

Simon Tregarth had left the railroad station two — or was it three hours ago? He had no reason to mark the passing of time any longer. It had ceased to have any meaning, and he had no destination. As the hunted, the runner, the hider — no, he was not in hiding. He walked in the open, alert, ready, his shoulders as straight, his head as erect as ever.

In those first frantic days when he had retained a wisp of hope, when he had used every scrap of animal cunning, every trick and dodge he had learned, when he had twisted and back-trailed, and befogged his tracks, then he had been governed by hours and minutes, he had run. Now he walked, and he would continue to walk until the death lurking in one of those doorways, in ambush in some alley would confront him. And even then he would go down using his fangs. His right hand, thrust deep into the soggy pocket of his top coat, caressed those fangs — smooth, sleek, deadly, a weapon which fitted as neatly into his palm as if it were a part of his finely trained body.