Two to Conquer by Marion Zimmer Bradley

I picked this one up off the Freebie table, even though I suspected there was probably a copy on my shelf at home -- there was. But it's all right, the dog ate this one and I still had one so I could finish reading it. I should apologize to the person who started the Freebie table; I'm sure she didn't have dog food in mind.

The big surprise (besides the dog's taste for literature) is that I have never read it before. I would have sworn that I had read all of Darkover, except the "ands." It is set in the time of Varzil the Good, apparently before the arrival (second arrival?) of the Terrans. The second half of it is about a terran doppelganger fetched to increase the odds for the di Asturiens, hence the title's keyword "two."

It is a curious mixture of technology and mysticism. The reader is clued in to the fact that human society on Darkover arrived in one of the "lost" colony ships of centuries past. Most identifiable "high tech" is credited to the workings of the masters of "laran" - psi powers which cover a wide range of potential - including the creation of radioactive dust, napalm, aircars, and identifying and bringing through time and space a doppelganger from distant earth - who was conveniently out of circulation at the time being incarcerated in stasis for the rest of his natural(?) life. A distant earth of which the Darkovans are completely ignorant.

This story illuminates one of the critical periods in the history of Darkover. Later in its history there are frequent references to "the Compact" which forbids the use of a weapon which does not bring its wielder into mortal danger himself. That sort of limits them to swords, knives, and lances - and, come to think of it, I don't recall the use of arrows - although those are a pretty natural development for that technological level - and it also begs the question of hunting game for meat - swords would seem to be seriously inefficient at bringing down large ungulates for dinner. Oh well.

We also actually meet Varzil the Good, who becomes a figure of legend in stories later in the planet chronology. We also meet the Sisterhood of the Sword and there are allusions to the later formation of the Order of Renunciates into which they morphed.

Bradley, herself, always denied a planetary chronology and sequence for Darkover. I read somewhere that she said that it was her universe, and they were her characters and if she would do with them as she pleased - regardless of plaintive wails for logic. I admire her independence. Heinlein's "Future History" timeline always made me rather uncomfortable.