CANVAS TEARS, by Steve Rodgers   As the smells of roasting human flesh weaved through the Grand Suuk market, Amis began to entertain new doubts about his strategy. From atop an auction platform, the idea of defeating a weather-invoking madman in his own city suddenly seemed a half-step away from lunacy. What foul mead had […]

WHITE RAINBOW AND BROWN DEVIL, by Raphael Ordonez   Francisco Carvajal y Lopez, vagabond of the Tashyan badlands, conquistador in his own mind, emerged upon a caliche bank from thickets that sang sweetly beneath the sun. The gravel floodplain stretched from north to south before him. Several sycamores, the first trees he had seen that day, […]

THAT SLEEP OF DEATH, by Mary-Jean Harris   “There is no religion higher than Truth,” Lady Wickham spoke as she raised her lace handkerchief to her eyes. Before I could comment on the great sensibility of such a phrase, she exclaimed, “Isn’t it blasphemous!” As a philosopher, I could by no means agree with that, […]

THINGS OF SHREDS AND PATCHES, by Norman Doege   Muffled voices and broken songs seeped like slow passion around a carved birch door. Scori, courier to the Lord-Apparent of Bremland, had ridden through the northlands to find himself in the cold dark staring at a brass knocker nestled between a pair of wooden breasts. Over […]

CRAZY SNAKE AND THE DEMONS OF OMETEPE, by Eric Atkisson   What has occurred before: Comanches, white men called them. Lords of the Southern Plains. Warriors and horsemen the likes of which had never been seen, their name was feared and their deeds were legend. From the ranks of this mighty people came one they […]