After thirty years, Suzy McKee Charnas has completed her incomparable epic tale of men and women, slavery and freedom, power and human frailty. It started with Walk to the End of the World, where Alldera the Messenger is a slave among the Fems, in thrall to men whose own power is waning. In continued with Motherlines, where Alldera the Runner is a fugitive among the Riding Women, who live a tribal life of horse-thieving and storytelling, killing the few men who approach their boundaries. The books that finish Alldera's story, The Furies and The Conqueror's Child, are now available. Once you start here, you won't want to stop until you've read the last word of the last book. Winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award “One of the best book I've read this year.” ― Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina “Only one science fiction book in hundreds manages to convince the reader that it ever could have happened anywhere, and at least that few are worth reading at all....[Charnas has] created a future that is at once believable and fascinating.” ― William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch “[ Motherlines is] a pioneer exercise in women's fantasies of independence, skill, freedom. It has a robust, earthy beauty. She has a genius for grasping ideas and dreams that are in the air and making them concrete and dramatic in her fiction.” ― Marge Piercy, author of Gone to Soldiers and Woman on the Edge of Time "One of the best books I've read this year." --Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina "Only one science fiction book in hundreds manages to convince the reader that it ever could have happened anywhere, and at least that few are worth reading at all. . . . [Charnas has] created a future that is at once believable and fascinating." --William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch "[Motherlines is] a pioneer exercise in women's fantasies of independence, skill, freedom. It has a robust, earthy beauty. She has a genius for grasping ideas and dreams that are in the air and making them concrete and dramatic in her fiction." --Marge Piercy, author of Gone to Soldiers and Woman on the Edge of Time . Suzy McKee Charnas (1939-2023) was the author of over a dozen works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including the Holdfast series from Tor Books and the Sorcery Hall series of books for young adults. She was the winner of the Hugo Award (for her short story "Boobs"), the Nebula (for her novella Unicorn Tapestry) and won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award twice, once retrospectively for the first two Holdfast books and then for The Conqueror's Child , final volume of the Holdfast series. She adapted her novel, The Vampire Tapestry , for the stage in the late 1990s. She was born and brought up in New York City, and lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Slave and the Free Books 1 and 2 of 'The Holdfast Chronicles': 'Walk to the End of the World' and 'Motherlines' By Charnas, Suzy McKee Tor Books Copyright © 1999 Charnas, Suzy McKee All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312869120 1     In an alley of the silent Pennelton compound in Lammintown, a man waited, his hands tucked into his sleeves against the night’s chill. He was a Rover Captain in full uniform under his disguise of blanks. He stood alone in the shadow of a doorway. Most of the lamps fixed to the corners of the buildings had been smashed. By the light of one that still burned he could discern obscene and insulting figures scratched into the granite walls. The Pennelton Company was assigned away south this five-year, and young men of other Lammintown companies had turned the empty compound into a temporary skidro. He had followed a group of wild lads down here, seekers of illicit pleasures. The one whose services they had hired tonight was the one he was after; d Layo the DarkDreamer, a young man too, but of no company, no order, and no legitimate use to his fellows. Heavy-muscled, smooth-moving, a tawny-colored night-slinker, a prowling predator with a broad, blunt-nosed face and wide-curling mouth, d Layo padded before his mind’s eye. D Layo really did look like that, though it wasn’t manly for the captain to think of even such a corrupt man as an actual beast. The Lammintown trumpets brayed, as they did every quarter-hour. The captain began silently reciting the Chant Protective, to drive away visions. The chant opened with a reckoning of the size and reach of the Holdfast and of all the fellowship of men living in it; not a great or impressive tally, but it served to remind a man of his brothers and of what they expected from him. The Holdfast was a strip of plain bisected by a river. A good runner could cross the plain north-to-south at its widest point in three days or run the length of the river from the coast to ’Troi in seven. The river descended from ’Troi on the high inland plateau. Further east, the City overlooked the river’s fork: the southern branch reached down over the flats to Bayo; the no