HEART OF VENGEANCE, A Tale of Azatlán, by Gregory D. Mele, artwork by Justin Pfeil, audio by Karen Bovenmyer Jaakhár was in flames, the ancient palace-complex engulfed in a red, vengeful glow that gleamed evilly in the blackness of night. Helomon Twelve-Vulture, now Lord of the Red Flower Clan, reined in his foaming, winded horse, […]

THE WHISPERING HEALER, by Larisa Walk “What you want at this hour?” Anisia squinted at the man on her doorstep. He held a small bundle in his arms. The light from her oil lamp trembled in yellow blotches on his fish belly-white, too-smooth face. Newborn babes didn’t have skin that unmarred. Yet his eyes seemed […]

DO NOT FEAR, FOR THE WORK WILL BE PURE, by Michael Johnstone, artwork by Karolína Wellartová, audio by Karen Bovenmyer. For all that his Rat Quarter Cycle conferred upon him deserved esteem in Elsidor, leading to a flourishing period of commissions from the highborn, Zayal’s now justifiably celebrated statue of King Rolan I, shaped from […]

FORD, by Mary Soon Lee, artwork by Gary McCluskey  Rain, wind, water, mud– men and horses slowed so that the two-day journey took three days, though they set out before dawn and rode past sunset.  Wind, water, mud, rain– the last light lingering in the west when they climbed the ridge overlooking the ford, the wide river swollen, the plain across the river flooded. Diminished shapes […]

THE DEMON IN THE JAR, by Cullen Groves, artwork by Miguel Santos Under the watchful old eyes of the Carian wizard Hydáspes Onto the black ship of Draba a single amphora they loaded, Painted with sigils strange, stowed in the stern by the steering oars; Draba the captain, night-dark of skin, overtowered the wizard Standing […]