The Spell-Bound Scholar

PROLOGUE

Twenty-five years ago, a secret agent named Rod Gallowglass landed on the lost colony planet of Gramarye, determined to turn it into a democracy. That was the purpose of his organization, SCENT, the Society for the Conversion of Extraterrestrial Nascent Totalitarianisms—to sniff out the lost colonies and bring all the colonial planets back within the umbrella of the interstellar democracy that had begun on Earth. But Rod discovered that Gramarye wasn't your average lost colony—about one out of ten people was a telepath, telekinetic, and/or other form of esper. That was much, much higher than the average in the rest of the Terran Sphere—but still rare on Gramarye, and since the planet was medieval, the rest of the people thought the espers were witches. Rod, though, knew that they would be the perfect solution to the communication problems that were beginning to trouble the interstellar democracy for which he worked.

He wasn't the only one to realize Gramarye's value, though—so did the totalitarian and anarchists from the future, who had failed to overthrow the interstellar democracy because of the "interference" of the descendants of Gramarye's "witches." They sent secret agents back to the past— Rod's present—to try to overthrow the monarchy and take over the planet before it could develop a democratic government of its own and join the interstellar democratic federation.

With the help of an attractive witch named Gwendylon, Rod managed to fight off the futurians. Then he achieved the even more remarkable (to him) feat of marrying Gwendylon. He was equally amazed by his four children. Rod and Gwen had their share of trials, but between them, they managed to raise all four (and each other) to maturity.

Not that the futurians gave up, of course. They kept trying to overthrow the government, and when Rod and his family foiled them at every turn, they changed their goal into overthrowing the Gallowglasses, preferably by killing them. When that didn't work either, they changed their tactics: They raised Gramarye witch-orphans to become fanatical totalitarian or anarchists and set them to neutralizing the Gallowglass threat. The only one to be even marginally successful was Finister, a very powerful (and beautiful) young projective esper—she was able to make those around her see in her an appearance completely different from her natural one, and with a talent that amounted to instant hypnotism, was even able to make others see themselves as having changed form—say, into toads. She managed to give the eldest Gallowglass child, Magnus, enough harrowing near-sexual experiences to make him lose all interest in sex (thereby assuring that he wouldn't have any descendants to interfere with the future anarchists) and leave Gramarye, to go wandering around the Terran Sphere overthrowing oppressive governments.

On the strength of that success (and her ability to influence, then assassinate, her top boss), she became Chief Agent of the anarchists of Gramarye. She then set about thwarting Cordelia's romances by becoming her rival to both her suitors. Prince Alain, however, loved Cordelia so much that he was able to resist Finister's blandishments and, after a crash course in being romantic (provided by Cordelia's younger brother Geoffrey), wooed and won the Gallowglass daughter.

Smarting from defeat, Finister tried to recoup her self-esteem by attempting to snare and marry the third Gallowglass child, Geoffrey; she would, of course, make sure he did not reproduce. However, she ran into tough and unexpected competition—a spectacular female bandit who called herself Quicksilver.

Finister disguised herself as Moraga, a plain young witch whose heart had been broken by a greedy knight who had wooed and won her, used her to make him a fortune, then spurned her. Finister discovered this, had Moraga kidnapped and imprisoned, then assumed her appearance by use of projective telepathy. As Moraga, she challenged the local knight, shire-reeve, and count by conquering a few villages on their respective domains. The elves, who had always liked Moraga, were alarmed by her personality change and her probable fate (death, for a traitor and rebel). They asked Geoffrey Gallowglass to intervene, and he did.

Thus Moraga fought Geoffrey and Quicksilver as a plain, lumpen witch. They talked her into surrendering to them, promising her a fair trial and the chance of justice, by bringing the men who had wronged her to trial with her. She joined the party, and her background did indeed inspire pity in Geoffrey. Once near him, though, Finister exercised her shape-changing abilities, gradually becoming beautiful, voluptuous, and seductive. Geoffrey, however, had already fallen head over heels in love with Quicksilver.

Geoffrey called in his little brother Gregory to help escort Quicksilver and Moraga to Castle Loguire for trial. Finister tried to work her wiles on Gregory but found that he was totally indifferent to sex or, indeed, anything having to do with emotion. Finally, Geoffrey left it to Gregory to defend "Moraga" in her trial before his old friend Duke Diarmid and his parents, Their Majesties Tuan and Catherine. She was pardoned but sentenced to see if she wanted to join the Royal Coven, and sent to Runnymede with Gregory as escort. Geoffrey, on the other hand, defended Quicksilver and managed to have her punishment limited to wandering the countryside with him looking for wrongs to right—whereupon he proposed, and she accepted.

Finister was still determined to steal Geoffrey away from Quicksilver and Alain from Cordelia, but as long as she was on her way to Runnymede and away from the opportunity to do some serious fiance-stealing, she thought she might as well seize the chance to romantically enslave Gregory and kill him or, at least, his interest in sex and women. Since the latter was pretty low anyway, it wouldn't take much killing.