generations on Orthe, going back to the very alien race who first landed there and died out but brought the humanoid Witchbreed as their servitors. The half-breed survivors of the Witchbreed now live in the far southern city of Kel Harantish. Eventually Christie learns that Ruric has been behind the many attempts to kill or frame her, fearing what the corrupting Earth influence might do to Orthe. Ruric is imprisoned, escapes, fights a bitter, hopeless civil war and is driven into exile. Christie leaves the planet in sombre mood. In Ancient Light, Christie returns to Orthe ten years later, this time as an unwilling representative of an Earth company that is looking for the lost technological secrets of the almost-extinct Witchbreed race that had destroyed its own civilization in Orthe's distant past, in order to exploit them. Political cohesion has been lost and, at the same time, war is developing between two groups on Orthe, worsened by the introduction of high-technology weapons. The novel is bleaker in tone than Golden Witchbreed. Characters from that novel are re-encountered, older, changed, more cynical; others are dead. Christie experiences visions of the fall of the Golden Empire. She returns to Kasabaarde and discovers the new Hexenmeister is Ruric Orhlandis. Violence and killing spread: eventually in confused fighting in Tathcaer Ruric is killed. Christie buries her and prepares to become Hexenmeister in her stead by means of the memory transfer systems in the Brown Tower. They are destroyed before she can reach Kasabaarde by a vast explosion caused by the release of the Witchbreed weapon known as 'Ancient Light', a destroyer of organic life that leaves only crystal in its wake, leaving her with only partial memories of the lives of previous Hexenmeisters, thus preventing her (seemingly) from continuing their legacy. References Science fiction book series