In 1985, Deborah J. Ross sold her first Darkover short story to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Free Amazons of Darkover. For the first time, here are all of Ross's Darkover short stories, some of them previously unpublished, now collected in one volume. ...A pair of City Guards cadets invent an imaginary recruit in order to avoid their chores, and then must face the consequences... In the Ages of Chaos, a young wizard must rely on his uncertain powers to survive a haunted Tower... Only the legendary Keeper could save her circle under the onslaught of forbidden weapons, but the results would cripple generations of women to come... ...and in the title story, written as a birthday gift, Ross sends Marion Zimmer Bradley herself to Darkover to solve a crisis in "A Heat Wave in the Hellers"...