CHAPTERPAGE
I.The Wonder-Box [1]
II.Brookhollow [18]
III.In Embryo [30]
IV.The Trodden Way [38]
V.Ex Machina [47]
VI.The End of Solitude [60]
VII.Obsession [71]
VIII.A Change Impends [80]
IX.Nonresistance [88]
X.Driving Head-on [102]
XI.The Breakers [112]
XII.A Life Line [122]
XIII.Letters from a Little Girl [137]
XIV.A Journey Begins [157]
XV.The Locked House [162]
XVI.Scheherazade [180]
XVII.A White Skirt [193]
XVIII.By Radio [202]
XIX.The Captain of the Volhynia [216]
XX.The Drop of Irish [223]
XXI.Method and Foresight [239]
XXII.Two Thirteen [246]
XXIII.On His Way [253]
XXIV.The Road to Paris [261]
XXV.Cup and Lip [280]
XXVI.Rue Soleil d’Or [290]
XXVII.From Four to Five [305]
XXVIII.Together [312]
XXIX.En Famille [325]
XXX.Jardin Russe [337]
XXXI.The Café des Bulgars [347]
XXXII.The Cercle Extranationale [358]
XXXIII.A Rat Hunt [377]
XXXIV.Sunrise [395]
XXXV.The First Day [410]

THE DARK STAR

xviii

THE DARK STAR

PREFACE

CHILDREN OF THE STAR

Not the dark companion of Sirius, brightest of all stars—not our own chill and spectral planet rushing toward Vega in the constellation of Lyra—presided at the birth of millions born to corroborate a bloody horoscope.

But a Dark Star, speeding unseen through space, known to the ancients, by them called Erlik, after the Prince of Darkness, ruled at the birth of those myriad souls destined to be engulfed in the earthquake of the ages, or flung by it out of the ordered pathway of their lives into strange byways, stranger highways—into deeps and deserts never dreamed of.