LIVING TOTEM, by Vaughn Heppner: Kulik lifted his face into the blizzard, rose from his shivering crouch and kept staggering.  Icy particles beat at him.  Snow crunched under his moccasins.  His toes throbbed, but that was good because it meant they hadn’t frozen. He pulled his fur cape tighter.  Hoary frost coated his eyebrows and […]

DEATH’S LAST DAUGHTER, by Jeff Crook: After many adventures, the mameluke warrior Jafar al-Tinnin is no closer to finding his lover, Leiley, or avenging himself against Imam Nuri — the Sufi sorcerer who kidnapped her. At a cursed well in the Libyan desert, Jafar and his friend Ketei seek the advice of a mad djinn, […]

THE LAST OF HIS KIND, by Bill Ward: Desert winds churned around Tanout, and sand wraiths struck him to the earth.  On hands and knees, half-buried, blind, he fumbled toward his dead camel. A wraith twisted near, raked his face with granular claws, and gyred back into the howling storm. Another tugged his arm, trying […]

DEAD IN THE WATER, by Josh Wolf: We should have heeded Merlin, Gawain thought as the moon sank behind the trees. Across from him in the tiny coracle Lamorak and hulking Glachis snored like two metal clad bears in the darkness. The three of them were floating at the center of a small lake, held […]

SHADOWS FROM FIRELIGHT, by R. Michael Burns “The way of the samurai is to be found in death.”   — Yamamoto Tsunemoto, Hagakuré   The figure on the moon-viewing balcony of Yamagumo Castle might’ve been no more than a shadow but for the faintest shimmer of starlight in his dark, attentive eyes.  His face was […]