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    The Gifts of Asti
    The Gifts of Asti
    The Gifts of Asti
    Ebook46 pages32 minutes

    The Gifts of Asti

    By Andre Norton

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    Author

    Andre Norton

    For well over a half century, Andre Norton was one of the most popular science fiction and fantasy authors in the world. Since her first SF novels were published in the 1940s, her adventure SF has enthralled readers young and old. With series such as Time Traders, Solar Queen, Forerunner, Beast Master, Crosstime, and Janus, as well as many stand-alone novels, her tales of action and adventure throughout the galaxy have drawn countless readers to science fiction. Her fantasy, including the best-selling Witch World series, her "Magic" series, and many other unrelated novels, has been popular with readers for decades. Lauded as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, she is the recipient of a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. Not only have her books been enormously popular; she also has inspired several generations of SF and fantasy writers, especially many talented women writers who have followed in her footsteps. In the past two decades she worked with other writers on a number of novels. Most notable among these were collaborations with Mercedes Lackey, the Halfblood Chronicles, as well as collaborations with A.C. Crispin (in the Witch World series) and Sherwood Smith (in the Time Traders and Solar Queen series). Andre Norton passed away in 2005.

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      Book preview

      The Gifts of Asti - Andre Norton

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gifts of Asti, by Andre Alice Norton

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: The Gifts of Asti

      Author: Andre Alice Norton

      Release Date: August 11, 2006 [EBook #19029]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIFTS OF ASTI ***

      Produced by Greg Weeks, Geetu Melwani and the Online

      Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

      Transcriber's notes.

      This etext was produced from Fantasy Book Vol. 1, No. 3 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.

      A number of typographical errors found in the original text have been corrected in this version. A list of these errors is found at the end of this book.

      THE GIFTS OF ASTI

      by

      ANDREW NORTH

      She was the guardian of the worlds, but HER world was dead.

      Even here, on the black terrace before the forgotten mountain retreat of Asti, it was possible to smell the dank stench of burning Memphir, to imagine that the dawn wind bore upward from the pillaged city the faint tortured cries of those whom the barbarians of Klem hunted to their prolonged death. Indeed it was time to leave—

      Varta, last of the virgin Maidens of Asti, shivered. The scaled and wattled creature who crouched beside her thigh turned his reptilian head so that golden eyes met the aquamarine ones set slantingly at a faintly provocative angle in her smooth ivory face.

      We go—?

      She nodded in answer to that unvoiced question Lur had sent into her brain, and turned toward the dark cavern which was the mouth of Asti's last dwelling place. Once, more than a thousand years before when the walls of Memphir were young, Asti had lived among men below. But in the richness and softness which was trading Memphir, empire of empires, Asti found no place. So He and those who served Him had withdrawn to this mountain outcrop. And she, Varta, was the last, the very last to bow knee at Asti's shrine and raise her voice in the dawn hymn—for Lur, as were all his race, was mute.

      Even the loot of Memphir would not sate the shaggy headed warriors who had stormed her gates this day. The stairway to Asti's Temple was plain enough to see and there would be those to essay the steep climb hoping to find a treasure which did not exist. For Asti was an austere God, delighting in plain walls and bare altars. His last priest had

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